James

girls:

23.8k births since 1880

#924 (84th percentile)

boys:

5.2M births since 1880

#1 (100th percentile)

overall:

5.3M births since 1880

#1 (100th percentile)

Popularity Trends

The name James is the #1 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 5,250,328 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 100.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 100.0% of all names). For boys, it ranks #1 (100.0% percentile) for all time with 5,226,569 births since 1880. For girls, it ranks #924 (83.8% percentile) for all time with 23,759 births since 1880.

James has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880

The name James has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 99.5% of all recorded births being male.

For boys, James reached its peak popularity in 1940, achieving the 100.0% percentile (ranked #1) with 52,674 births per million. The name was most common in 1944, with 55,398 births per million (ranked 100.0% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2018, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, James ranks #4 for boys (99.7% percentile) with 6,373 births per million, which is 11.5% of its peak share of births.

For girls, James reached its peak popularity in 1928, achieving the 49.3% percentile (ranked #308) with 357 births per million. The name was most common in 1930, with 359 births per million (ranked 47.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2014, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, James ranks #873 for girls (7.8% percentile) with 45 births per million, which is 12.6% of its peak share of births.

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

1880 2023 18802023

Key Statistics

Total Births
23,759
Peak Births
427
Peak Year
1928
First Recorded
1880
Peak Percentile
49.3%
Current Percentile
7.8%
Peak Rank
#308
Current Rank
#873
Female statistics
Total Births
5,226,569
Peak Births
94,761
Peak Year
1940
First Recorded
1880
Peak Percentile
100.0%
Current Percentile
99.7%
Peak Rank
#1
Current Rank
#4
Male statistics

How to Pronounce James

Our model found one way to pronounce the name James. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.

Our model is 100.0% confident that James is pronounced as jaymz, which has 1 syllables.

1
100.0%

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 James? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with James. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for James, 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 JH EY1 M Z) 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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