Jacobs
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Jacobs is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Denmark it is the 14th most common given name. Recorded meaning: patronymic from the personal name Jacob.
- NLNetherlands1 in 557K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 289as Jacob
- USUnited States1 in 413as Jacob
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 Jacobs 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)
- #439 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 643 (measured from records)
- 1 in 557K (inferred from the name graph)
805,730 named Jacob, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Jacob in US United States, GB United Kingdom, DK Denmark and 2 more and Jakob in DE Germany, NO Norway, SE Sweden and 1 more.
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)
patronymic from the personal name Jacob. As a Jewish surname it has also assimilated various other patronymics from the same personal name, as for example Jacobowitz.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jacobs 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 | #188 | 805,730as Jacob | 1 in 413 | 805K | Jacob | 643 |
| NG Nigeria | #214 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Jacob | 110 |
| ZA South Africa | #69 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 885 | — | Jacobs | 163 |
| DE Germany | #241 | ≈57,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | listed | Jakob | 245 |
| GB United Kingdom | #304 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 14K | Jacob | 331 |
| DK Denmark | #14 | 20,316as Jacob | 1 in 289 | 20K | Jacob | 207 |
| SE Sweden | #94 | 15,821as Jakob | 1 in 645 | 16K | Jakob | 145 |
| NO Norway | #165 | 7,769as Jakob | 1 in 704 | 28K | Jakob | 85 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 6,201as Jakob | 1 in 339 | 6.3K | Jakob | 43 |
| NL Netherlands | #200 | 31 | 1 in 557K | 47K | Jacob | 164 |
805,730 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); the dfa-band-3 register; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Jacobs is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An English surname originating as a patronymic derived from Jacob.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, 'Son of Jacob'.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In German, Patronymische Bildung mit -s zu Jacob; norddeutsche Variante. Bearer count: 9405.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Hebrew-origin surname meaning "supplanter"; common at the Cape.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In Dutch, a surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Helen Jacobsb. 1908USAmerican tennis player (1908–1997)
- Arthur P. Jacobsb. 1922USpress agent (1922-1973)
- Jill Bidenb. 1951USnot in their usual nameAmerican educator and First Lady of the United States from 2021 to 2025
- Lawrence Hilton-Jacobsb. 1953USAmerican actor
- Marc Jacobsb. 1963USAmerican fashion designer (born 1963)
- Glenn Jacobsb. 1967USAmerican professional wrestler, actor, and politician
- Gillian Jacobsb. 1982USAmerican film, theater and television actress
- Devery Jacobsb. 1993CACanadian actress (born 1993)
- Marcell Jacobsb. 1994ITItalian athlete (born 1994)
- Chosen Jacobsb. 2001USAmerican actor, singer
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 58 sources across 35 countries.
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- Where does the name Jacobs come from?
- patronymic from the personal name Jacob. As a Jewish surname it has also assimilated various other patronymics from the same personal name, as for example Jacobowitz. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Jacobs mean?
- Recorded meaning: patronymic from the personal name Jacob.
- In which country does Jacobs have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 806 thousand people named Jacob, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Jacobs most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jacobs is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 557 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Jacobs?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 31 people named Jacobs, about 1 in 557 thousand residents.
- How common is Jacobs compared with other names?
- In the United States, Jacobs is the 188th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jacobs?
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/jacobsThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Jacobs” — the 188th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.