Jason
- Pronunciation
- [Ja-son]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Healer
- Origin
- Greek
About the Name Jason
Jason descends from the Greek Iasōn, derived from the verb iasthai meaning "to heal." The name's overwhelming classical anchor is Jason, the Greek mythological hero who led the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece — one of the foundational heroic narratives of pre-Homeric Greek myth. Jason's story (recorded most extensively in Apollonius of Rhodes's 3rd-century BCE epic Argonautica) includes his retrieval of the Fleece from Colchis, his marriage to the sorceress Medea, and his eventual tragic ending after Medea's revenge for his betrayal.
The name appears in the New Testament (Acts 17:5–9, where a Jason of Thessalonica hosts the apostle Paul), giving it Christian as well as classical pedigree. Despite this combined classical-and-Christian register, Jason was rare in pre-modern English-language naming. The contemporary American boom is essentially a 20th-century phenomenon. Jason held the US #1 boys' rank multiple times in the 1970s and was top-10 throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
The name has receded since 2000 but remains in steady use. Notable bearers include American actor Jason Bateman, MMA fighter Jason "Mayhem" Miller, the fictional Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th horror franchise (introduced 1980, paradoxically helping seed the name through pop-culture recognition), and Australian actor Jason Donovan. The name's appeal is its compact heroic-Greek register — two short syllables, hard consonants, mythological pedigree, and tonal versatility. The contemporary contracted form Jace (see separate entry) is itself a top-100 standalone name. Common nicknames Jay, Jase, and the rare Sonny each carry distinct registers; international forms include Iason (Greek), Giasone (Italian), Jasón (Spanish), and Iasonas (modern Greek).
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jason
US Popularity History (1966–2025)
Annual US births named Jason by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1977 with 55,636 boys named Jason (boy rank #2 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #165 for boys (2,224 US births). That's 163 places below its 1977 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 Jason 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 Jason the strongest states are Maryland, Massachusetts, New York.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maryland | #86 | 715 |
| 2 | Massachusetts | #91 | 762 |
| 3 | New York | #92 | 2,129 |
| 4 | California | #94 | 4,671 |
| 5 | Florida | #95 | 2,131 |
| 6 | New Jersey | #97 | 997 |
| 7 | Virginia | #103 | 913 |
| 8 | Texas | #105 | 3,512 |
| 9 | Nevada | #111 | 284 |
| 10 | District of Columbia | #112 | 95 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wisconsin | #210 | 283 |
| 2 | South Dakota | #207 | 56 |
| 3 | Idaho | #197 | 116 |
| 4 | Minnesota | #193 | 327 |
| 5 | Colorado | #190 | 357 |
| 6 | Kansas | #186 | 217 |
| 7 | Iowa | #185 | 206 |
| 8 | Maine | #184 | 48 |
| 9 | Nebraska | #182 | 156 |
| 10 | West Virginia | #177 | 127 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jason in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Jason
4 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Jason.
- Jason Bateman — TV Actor (1969)
- Jason Mraz — Pop Singer (1977)
- Jason Schwartzman is an American actor and musician best known for his roles in comedy films, especially ‘Rushmore’.
- Jason Statham — Movie Actor (1967)
Looking for names like Jason?
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 Jason to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jason 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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