Benjamin

girls:

2.5k births since 1914

#3486 (39th percentile)

boys:

807k births since 1880

#39 (99th percentile)

overall:

809.5k births since 1880

#64 (99th percentile)

Popularity Trends

The name Benjamin is the #64 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 809,484 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 99.2% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 99.2% of all names). For boys, it ranks #39 (99.2% percentile) for all time with 807,016 births since 1880. For girls, it ranks #3,486 (39.0% percentile) for all time with 2,468 births since 1914.

Benjamin has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for boys and since 1914 for girls).

The name Benjamin has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 99.7% of all recorded births being male.

For boys, Benjamin reached its peak popularity in 2016, achieving the 99.5% percentile (ranked #6) with 7,247 births per million. The name was most common in 1981, with 7,710 births per million (ranked 95.4% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2019, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Benjamin ranks #11 for boys (98.9% percentile) with 5,555 births per million, which is 72.0% of its peak share of births.

For girls, Benjamin reached its peak popularity in 1983, achieving the 11.8% percentile (ranked #684) with 54 births per million. The name was most common in 1983, with 54 births per million (ranked 11.8% percentile). Despite a low point in 2020, the name has seen a recent decline in popularity for girls. Currently, Benjamin ranks #944 for girls (0.3% percentile) with 5 births per million, which is 8.5% of its peak share of births.

This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Benjamin".

1880 2023 18802023

Key Statistics

Total Births
2,468
Peak Births
96
Peak Year
1983
First Recorded
1914
Peak Percentile
11.8%
Current Percentile
0.3%
Peak Rank
#684
Current Rank
#944
Female statistics
Total Births
807,016
Peak Births
15,733
Peak Year
2016
First Recorded
1880
Peak Percentile
99.5%
Current Percentile
98.9%
Peak Rank
#6
Current Rank
#11
Male statistics

How to Pronounce Benjamin

Our model has identified 4 different pronunciations for the name Benjamin. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.

Our model is 52.5% confident that Benjamin is pronounced as BEHN-juh-mihn, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is BEHN-juh-muhn, at 27.5% confidence, with 3 syllables.

BEHN-juh-muhn (3 syllables)
Verified
27.5% confidence
B EH1 N JH AH0 M AH0 N
BEH-nyuh-mihn (3 syllables)
10.0% confidence
B EH1 N Y AH0 M IH0 N
BEHN-juh-meen (3 syllables)
10.0% confidence
B EH1 N JH AH0 M IY0 N

Possible Additional Pronunciations

If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Benjamin? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Benjamin. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Benjamin, please vote using the thumbs up button.

About Pronunciation Data

Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.

For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.

The raw pronunciations shown (like B EH1 N JH AH0 M IH0 N) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.

Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.

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