Bob
- Pronunciation
- [Bob]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Abbreviation Of Robert.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Bob
Bob is an English abbreviated form of Robert, which derives from the Old High German Hrodebert, built from hrod ("fame") and beraht ("bright"), meaning "bright fame." Bob developed from Robert through the medieval English rhyming-nickname tradition — Rob became Bob by replacing the initial consonant — just as Will became Bill and Rick became Dick. It entered the SSA records as a standalone registered given name in its own right in the twentieth century, though as a nickname it had existed for centuries. The name carries an instantly recognizable American friendliness.
Several celebrated bearers appear: comedian Bob Hope (born 1903), whose seven-decade career on stage, radio, film, and television and wartime troop tours made him one of the most-recognized entertainers of his era; game show host Bob Barker (born 1923), best known for presenting The Price Is Right on CBS for 35 years, from 1972 to 2007; comedian and actor Bob Newhart (born 1929), whose deadpan style and two long-running sitcoms made him a familiar comic voice from the 1960s through the 2000s; baseball player and broadcaster Bob Uecker (born 1935), who played six Major League Baseball seasons and spent more than half a century calling Milwaukee Brewers games; folk singer and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan (born 1941), whose work since the early 1960s reshaped popular song and earned him the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature; and rock singer Bob Seger (born 1945), whose work with the Silver Bullet Band produced some of the most-played American heartland-rock songs of the 1970s and 1980s.
Bob first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1927 and peaked in 1934 at rank #75, a period when shortened forms of Robert were at their most fashionable. It last appeared in the top-1000 in 1940 at rank #99, accumulating more than 31,000 top-1000 births in that window. Recorded variants include Bobbie, Bobby, and Bobo.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Bob
US Popularity History (1927–1940)
Annual US births named Bob by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1934 with 2,478 boys named Bob (boy rank #75 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1940, ranked #99 for boys (2,082 US births). That's 24 places below its 1934 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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Variant Forms
Famous People Named Bob
10 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Bob.
- Bob Barker — Game Show Host (1923)
- Bob Black is an American author and anarchist.
- Bob Dylan — Folk Singer (1941)
- Bob Fosse was a famous actor, choreographer, dancer and director.
- Bob Hope — Comedian (1903)
- Bob Newhart — TV Actor (1929)
- Bob Saget — TV Actor (1956)
- Bob Seger — Rock Singer (1945)
- Bob Uecker — Baseball Player (1935)
- Bob Wise was the 33rd Governor of West Virginia.
Looking for names like Bob?
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 Bob to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Bob against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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