Jacobi
A masculine name of Hebrew origin meaning "supplanter" or "holding the heel".
Name Census estimates that about 4,373 living Americans carry the first name Jacobi. It is a predominantly male name (93.1% of registrations). The average person named Jacobi today is around 19 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Jacobi births was 2008 (201 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Jacobi. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Jacobi with official rankings and popularity over time.
People living today
4.4K
~ 1 in 78,380 Americans
Peak year
2008
201 babies that year
Average age
19
years old
2024 SSA rank
#1,820
Tracked since 1973
Census
Jacobi in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 3,239 people with the first name Jacobi, which placed it at #5,336 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#5,336
National first-name rank
People counted
3.2K
3,239 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
1.1
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
Black or African American
59.0% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Jacobi
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Jacobi is Black at 59.0%. The next largest groups are White (21.0%) and Hispanic (9.0%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Jacobi described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Jacobi at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- Black or African American59.0% · 1,911
- White21.0% · 681
- Hispanic or Latino9.0% · 290
- Two or more races8.8% · 285
- American Indian and Alaska Native1.5% · 48
- Asian and Pacific Islander0.7% · 24
Gender
Gender distribution for Jacobi
Jacobi leans heavily male at 93.1% of total registrations, but 306 girls have also been registered with the name over the years, giving it a small but present crossover presence.
Jacobi as a male name
- Ranked #1,820 in 2024
- 89 male births in 2024
- Peak: 2008 (189 births)
Jacobi as a female name
- Ranked #14,281 in 2022
- 6 female births in 2022
- Peak: 1992 (21 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Jacobi leans strongly male. 2,938 people counted with this name were male (91.1%), compared with 288 female bearers (8.9%).
Popularity
Jacobi: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Jacobi from the 1970s through to the 2020s, spanning 6 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 2010s, with 1,470 total registrations. Although the numbers have come down from the 2010s peak, Jacobi remains solidly in use and shows no sign of disappearing from maternity wards.
Babies born per year
Decades
Jacobi by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Jacobi during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Jacobis live
The SSA's state-level files cover 23 states and territories. Texas, Georgia, Florida recorded the most babies named Jacobi, while South Dakota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 96 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Jacobi
The name Jacobi is a masculine given name derived from the Hebrew name Ya'aqov, meaning "supplanter" or "one who follows". It is the Latinized form of the biblical name Jacob, which is found in the Book of Genesis. The name was originally used by the ancient Israelites and later spread across the Mediterranean region.
In the Middle Ages, the name Jacobi became popular in various European cultures, particularly in Italy, where it was sometimes spelled as Jacopo or Iacopo. One of the earliest recorded instances of the name was Jacobi de Voragine, an Italian chronicler and archbishop of Genoa, who lived from around 1230 to 1298.
During the Renaissance period, the name Jacobi gained prominence among intellectuals and artists. One notable figure was Jacobi Sannazaro, an Italian poet and humanist born in 1458, known for his work "Arcadia". Another was Jacobi Robusti, also known as Tintoretto, an Italian Renaissance painter born in 1518 and renowned for his masterpieces in Venice.
In the scientific realm, the name Jacobi is associated with Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, a German mathematician born in 1804, who made significant contributions to the field of elliptic functions and differential equations. Additionally, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, a German philosopher born in 1743, was notable for his critique of Kant's philosophy and his development of the concept of "faith."
In literature, Jacobi was the name of a character in William Shakespeare's play "Cymbeline," written around 1610. The play explores themes of love, loyalty, and deception, with Jacobi serving as a minor character.
Other notable individuals with the name Jacobi include Moritz von Jacobi, a German engineer and pioneer in the field of electroplating, born in 1801, and Victor Jacobi, a German-American playwright and novelist born in 1839, known for his works exploring the lives of immigrants in America.
People
Jacobi + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Jacobi as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with J
Other first names starting with J with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Jacobi: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Jacobi?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 4,373 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Jacobi going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 78,380 US residents.
Is Jacobi a common name?
We classify Jacobi as "Rare". It ranks above 96.2% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 4,440 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Jacobi most popular?
The single biggest year for Jacobi was 2008, when 201 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Jacobi is about 19 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Jacobi in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 3,239 people with the name Jacobi, or 1.07 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #5,336 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Jacobi in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Jacobi?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Jacobi leans strongly male. 2,938 people counted with this name were male (91.1%), compared with 288 female bearers (8.9%). The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Jacobi?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Jacobi is Black at 59.0%. The next largest groups are White (21.0%) and Hispanic (9.0%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Jacobi most often in the Census?
Black is the largest reported group for people named Jacobi in the 2020 Census, accounting for 59.0% (1,911 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Jacobi in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Jacobi a male name?
Yes, 93.1% of people registered as Jacobi in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Jacobi still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Jacobi in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Jacobi can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How common is the name Jacobi?
HowManyOfMe.org, our sister site, answers that with the living-bearer count in one glance.