Jess
given name · Latin script
Meaning: 3 Usually a girl’s name, a short form of Jessie or pJessica
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dʒɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jess is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.1K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 5.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 515 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈85,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
3 Usually a girl’s name, a short form of Jessie or pJessica. As a boy’s name, it is a short form of pJesse.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jess 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈85,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Jess | 31 |
| US United States | #962 | 18,154 | 1 in 18K | 13K | Jess | 515 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | — | Jess | 100 |
| AU Australia | #329 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 3 | Jess | 225 |
| GB United Kingdom | #642 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | 5 | Jess | 240 |
| HK Hong Kong | #921 | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Jess | 48 |
| NZ New Zealand | #323 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Jess | 119 |
| SG Singapore | #421 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Jess | 81 |
| DK Denmark | — | 1,055 | 1 in 5.6K | 1.1K | — | 3 |
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; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Jess is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
English: usually a female name, a short form of JESSIE or JESSICA . As a male name, it is a simplified form of JESSE .
as a word
In Icelandic, yes (exclamation of satisfaction, joy, etc.)
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)
- Jess Barkerb. 1912USAmerican actor (1912-2000)
- Jess Hahnb. 1921USactor (1921-1998)
- Jess Osunab. 1933USAmerican actor
- Jess Winfieldb. 1961USAmerican author, screenwriter, voice actor, and magazine editor
- Jess Harnellb. 1963USAmerican voice actor
- Jess Thorupb. 1970DKDanish association football player and manager
- Jess Weixlerb. 1981USAmerican actress
- Jess Wadeb. 1988GBBritish physicist, Wikimedian, and campaigner for gender inclusion in science
- Jess Glynneb. 1989GBBritish singer (born 1989)
- Wyatt Oleffb. 2003USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 64 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13K | #1,704 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 5.4K | #1,704 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 1.1K | #318 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 18 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 10 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 5 | #541 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2024 | 3 | #407 |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2007 | 3 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 1993 | 3 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #16,886 |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2016 | 1 | #787 |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2016 | 1 | #787 |
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 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
- 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
- Is Jess a male or female name?
- Jess 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.
- What are other forms of the name Jess?
- In the etymology graph, Jessa, Jessika and Jessi are forms of the same name in other languages; Jessalyn is a recorded short or pet form; it is recorded as a short form of Jessica and Jesse.
- How common is the name Jess?
- In the United States, the national register counted 18,154 people named Jess in 2020, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Jess compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Jess is the 323rd most common given name of 26,737 given names recorded there.
- Where does the name Jess come from?
- 3 Usually a girl’s name, a short form of Jessie or pJessica. As a boy’s name, it is a short form of pJesse. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- In which country does Jess have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 85 thousand people named Jess in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jess.
- How do you pronounce Jess?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɛs/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Jess mean?
- Recorded meaning: 3 Usually a girl’s name, a short form of Jessie or pJessica.
What do you want to know about Jess?
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/jessThe 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, “Jess” — the 323rd most common given name in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.