בן
given name · Hebrew script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
בן is a given name written in the Hebrew script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Israel it is the 87th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Root ב־ן (b-n) From Proto-Semitic *bin-.
- ILIsrael≈1 in 669(inferred from the name graph)
- RORomania≈1 in 7.2K
- USUnited States1 in 3.1Kas Ben
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than בן itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 246 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 669 (inferred from the name graph)
107,539 named Ben, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ben in US United States.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Root ב־ן (b-n) From Proto-Semitic *bin-.
Sources 1
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
בן counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 107,539as Ben | 1 in 3.1K | 107K | Ben | 246 |
| IL Israel | #87 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 669 | 1K | בן | 153 |
| SE Sweden | — | 3,154as Ben | 1 in 3.2K | 3.2K | — | 11 |
| RO Romania | #439 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | בן | 16 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,150as Ben | 1 in 98K | 2.1K | — | 3 |
| FI Finland | — | 1,087as Ben | 1 in 5.1K | 1.5K | — | 5 |
107,539 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ben Jonsonb. 1572GBEnglish playwright, poet, and actor (1572-1637)
- Ben Roy Mottelsonb. 1926USDanish-American nuclear physicist (1926–2022)
- Ben Kingsleyb. 1943GBEnglish actor (born 1943)
- Ben Carsonb. 1951USNeurosurgeon and former United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Ben Okrib. 1959NGNigerian-born British poet and novelist (1959-)
- Ben Eltonb. 1959GBBritish comedian, author, playwright, actor and director
- Ben Johnsonb. 1961CACanadian sprinter
- Ben Wallaceb. 1970GBBritish politician, UK Defence Secretary (2019–2023)
- Ben Affleckb. 1972USAmerican film actor, director and screenwriter (born 1972)
- Ben Daviesb. 1993GBWelsh association football player (born 1993)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 4 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IL Israel | CBS Israel — Names given to babies (1949–present) | — | 44 | — |
| IL Israel | data.gov.il — First names in the population register | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Israel CBS babynamesIL (Hebrew-script given names × year × sex × sector)2024
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name בן mean, and where does it come from?
- Root ב־ן (b-n) From Proto-Semitic *bin-. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- Is בן a male or female name?
- בן is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does בן have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 108 thousand people named Ben, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name בן?
- In the United States, the national register counted 107,539 people named Ben in 2020, about 1 in 3.1 thousand residents.
- How common is בן compared with other names?
- In Israel, בן is the 87th most common given name of 107,303 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about בן?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%D7%91%D7%9FThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “בן” — the 87th most common given name in Israel. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.