Jessie
- Pronunciation
- [Je-ssie]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Rich
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Jessie
Jessie is a Hebrew-rooted name derived from Jesse, the biblical father of King David, whose name in Hebrew is Yishai — most commonly translated as "gift" or "God exists," though the precise etymology is debated; older traditions associate it with the meaning "rich." As a feminine given name, Jessie developed in the English-speaking tradition as a pet form of Jessica or as an independent feminine use of Jesse, particularly common in Scotland, where it has been a traditional woman's name since at least the 18th century. Its warmth and accessibility made it a natural candidate for both formal registration and everyday use.
Jessie has a longer and more complex SSA history than many names of comparable recognition. It appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880, the earliest year tracked, and peaked in 1881 at rank #35 — suggesting deep Victorian-era roots. Its total top-1000 births across the full tracked run exceed 98,000. Crucially, Jessie has demonstrated genuine modern revival: it appeared at #808 as recently as 2024, and the three most recent years tracked — 2022, 2023, and 2024 — all show it ranking in the mid-790s to 808 range with roughly 350 births per year. That modern presence, combined with its Victorian peak, makes Jessie one of the more striking long-arc names on the charts: a name that was popular in the 1880s, faded for much of the 20th century, and has genuinely returned.
Recorded variants include Jess, Jesse, Jessi, and Jessy.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jessie
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Jessie by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 3,591 girls named Jessie (girl rank #75 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #824 for girls (330 US births). That's 749 places below its 1918 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Jessie Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Jessie the strongest states are Montana, New Mexico, Idaho.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | #163 | 19 |
| 2 | New Mexico | #310 | 26 |
| 3 | Idaho | #365 | 22 |
| 4 | Mississippi | #470 | 33 |
| 5 | Oklahoma | #498 | 44 |
| 6 | California | #517 | 678 |
| 7 | Kansas | #517 | 20 |
| 8 | Kentucky | #529 | 41 |
| 9 | Arkansas | #541 | 48 |
| 10 | Utah | #554 | 48 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #963 | 135 |
| 2 | Ohio | #947 | 48 |
| 3 | Pennsylvania | #944 | 47 |
| 4 | Illinois | #920 | 54 |
| 5 | Wisconsin | #863 | 16 |
| 6 | Michigan | #836 | 38 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #820 | 53 |
| 8 | North Carolina | #790 | 83 |
| 9 | Maryland | #774 | 28 |
| 10 | Indiana | #772 | 51 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jessie in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Jessie?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Jessie to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jessie against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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