Jakob
- Pronunciation
- [Ja-kob]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Danish Form Of Jacob (Supplanter)
- Origin
- Danish
About the Name Jakob
Jakob is the Danish and German form of Jacob, one of the foundational names of the Abrahamic tradition. The Hebrew original Yaʿakov is traditionally interpreted as meaning "supplanter" — a reference to the biblical patriarch Jacob who grasped his twin brother Esau's heel at birth and later obtained Esau's birthright. The name passed through Greek as Iakōbos and Latin as Jacobus, entering the Germanic languages as Jakob while the English form settled on Jacob. The k-ending spelling Jakob signals a Scandinavian or Central European stylistic preference, distinguishing it visually from the more common American Jacob while preserving identical pronunciation.
In the American naming context, Jakob represents the broader trend of parents choosing Continental European orthographic variants of biblical classics — a practice that gives a familiar name a degree of distinction without altering its sound or cultural associations. The name benefits from Jacob's deep biblical resonance and centuries of use across Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, while the -k spelling offers a subtle nod to Northern European heritage or simply a preference for the less-common form.
Jakob first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 and peaked at #172 in 2001, accumulating 21,718 top-1000 births before dropping near the edge of the charts in recent years, standing at #990 in 2022 with 227 births. The name does not appear in the top-1000 in the most recent years of data tracked here. The recorded variant is Jakobe.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jakob
US Popularity History (2000–2022)
Annual US births named Jakob by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2001 with 2,192 boys named Jakob (boy rank #172 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2022, ranked #990 for boys (227 US births). That's 818 places below its 2001 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 Jakob Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Jakob the strongest states are West Virginia, Connecticut, Kentucky.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #358 | 15 |
| 2 | Connecticut | #457 | 23 |
| 3 | Kentucky | #508 | 32 |
| 4 | Oregon | #532 | 27 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #539 | 45 |
| 6 | Arkansas | #565 | 16 |
| 7 | Kansas | #583 | 16 |
| 8 | Colorado | #644 | 55 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #654 | 32 |
| 10 | Indiana | #678 | 43 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #935 | 232 |
| 2 | Florida | #855 | 156 |
| 3 | Georgia | #829 | 41 |
| 4 | New York | #811 | 124 |
| 5 | California | #808 | 314 |
| 6 | North Carolina | #777 | 54 |
| 7 | Michigan | #741 | 75 |
| 8 | Illinois | #737 | 77 |
| 9 | Virginia | #733 | 72 |
| 10 | Maryland | #726 | 25 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jakob in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jakobe | Feminine Form Of Jakoh | Female | German |
Looking for names like Jakob?
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 Jakob to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jakob against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).