Jakob
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Jakob is a given name 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. In German, recorded as from Hebrew Yaʿaqov, traditionally 'heel-holder'.
- SESweden1 in 645(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 704
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.4K
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 Jakob 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 339 (inferred from the name graph)
805,730 named Jacob, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
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 1 more and Jacobs in ZA South Africa.
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)
from Hebrew Yaʿaqov, traditionally 'heel-holder'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jakob is read(measured from records)
Jakob is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- German46%
from Hebrew Yaʿaqov, traditionally 'heel-holder'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from the Hebrew name Yaʿaqōb; here source of stock forms like billiger Jakob
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Jacob (Old Testament personality)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English19%
German/Scandinavian: "the supplanter"; one who takes the place of another; biblical name
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Danish14%
Jacob (biblical character).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jakob 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 | 15,821 | 1 in 645 | 16K | Jakob | 145 |
| NO Norway | #165 | 7,769 | 1 in 704 | 28K | Jakob | 85 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 6,201 | 1 in 339 | 6.3K | Jakob | 43 |
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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); 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)
Jakob is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Biblical: Hebrew, ‘supplanter’. See bJacob and }James in main dictionary.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Anund Jacobb. 1008SEKing of Sweden from 1022 until 1050 (1008-1050)
- Jacob Bernoullib. 1655CHSwiss mathematician (1655-1705)
- Josef Ib. 1678ATnot in their usual nameEmperor from 1705 till his death in 1711
- Jakob Steinerb. 1796CHSwiss mathematician (1796-1863)
- Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdyb. 1809DEnot in their usual nameGerman composer, pianist, organist and conductor of Jewish descent (1809-1847)
- Paul Deussenb. 1845DEnot in their usual nameGerman Indologist and philosopher (1845–1919)
- Jack Steinbergerb. 1921DEnot in their usual nameGerman-American physicist, Nobel laureate (1921-2020)
- Jakob Kuhnb. 1943CHSwiss association football player and manager (1943-2019)
- Jaap Stamb. 1972NLnot in their usual nameDutch association football player and manager (born 1972)
- Jakob Asserson Ingebrigtsenb. 2000NONorwegian middle- and long-distance runner
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 91 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 28K | #149 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 27K | #1,331 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 17K | #43 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 16K | #282 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 10K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 7.8K | — |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 6.3K | #73 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 6.2K | #41 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 297 | — |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — Najpogostejša imena in priimki (population register) | 2024 | 178 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2017 | 165 | #46 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 135 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
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
- In which country does Jakob 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 Jakob most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jakob is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 339 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- Is Jakob a male or female name?
- Jakob is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Jakob?
- In the etymology graph, James, Jaime and Jamie are forms of the same name in other languages; Jaap, Kobe and Jaka are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Jakob mean, and where does it come from?
- from Hebrew Yaʿaqov, traditionally 'heel-holder' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How common is the name Jakob?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 15,821 people named Jakob, about 1 in 645 residents.
- How common is Jakob compared with other names?
- In the United States, Jakob is the 188th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jakob?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jakobThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Jakob” — the 188th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.