girls:
533 births since 1997
#5183 (9th percentile)
boys:
21.1k births since 1989
#789 (83rd percentile)
overall:
21.7k births since 1989
#1731 (78th percentile)
The name Kobe is the #1,731 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 21,661 recorded births since 1989. This represents the 77.6% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 77.6% of all names). For boys, it ranks #789 (82.8% percentile) for all time with 21,128 births since 1989. For girls, it ranks #5,183 (9.3% percentile) for all time with 533 births since 1997.
Kobe first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1989 (1989 for boys and 1997 for girls). Birth data for Kobe is available in 30 out of the 35 years between 1989 and 2023 (30 years for boys and 27 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Kobe has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 97.5% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 94.8% of babies named Kobe were boys.
For boys, Kobe reached its peak popularity in 2020, achieving the 74.1% percentile (ranked #234) with 819 births per million. The name was most common in 2020, with 819 births per million (ranked 74.1% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2018, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Kobe ranks #386 for boys (57.7% percentile) with 411 births per million, which is 50.2% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kobe reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 5.9% percentile (ranked #881) with 33 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 33 births per million (ranked 5.9% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2015, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Kobe ranks #911 for girls (3.8% percentile) with 23 births per million, which is 70.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kobe".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kobe.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kobe", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kobe.
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Kobe. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 72.5% confident that Kobe is pronounced as KOH-bee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is KOH-bay, at 15.0% confidence, with 2 syllables.
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 Kobe? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kobe. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kobe, please vote using the thumbs up button.
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 K OW1 B IY0) 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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