Jeremy
- Pronunciation
- [Je-re-my]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Exalted Of The Lord
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Jeremy
Jeremy is the English form of Jeremiah (see separate entry on Jeremiah for the Hebrew Yirmeyahu etymology meaning "Yahweh exalts"). The contracted English form Jeremy emerged in the medieval period and has been used continuously in English-speaking countries since at least the 13th century.
The name's English-language history runs alongside but distinct from the longer Jeremiah. Notable bearers include British actor Jeremy Irons (Oscar winner for Reversal of Fortune, 1990), British politician Jeremy Corbyn (Labour Party leader 2015–2020), American actor Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye in Marvel's Avengers films), and contemporary basketball player Jeremy Lin (American-Taiwanese NBA player whose breakout 2012 "Linsanity" run with the New York Knicks made him a global cultural figure).
Jeremy held a US top-25 boys' rank from 1975 through 1995 — over two decades of top-tier American popularity. The name has receded since but remains in steady use. The contemporary American Jeremy of the 2010s and 2020s sits in the US top 100 boys' rank. The name's appeal is its compact biblical register — three soft syllables, the underlying Hebrew prophetic depth from the Jeremiah anchor, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. The name reads as both classical and contemporary. Common nicknames Jer, Jerry (the dominant mid-20th-century short form, also shared with Gerald), and the rare Mickey each carry distinct registers; the longer formal Jeremiah is sometimes used as Jeremy's official-document version. International forms include Jeremías (Spanish), Geremia (Italian), Jérémie (French), and the broader Jeremiah/Yirmeyahu family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jeremy
US Popularity History (1970–2025)
Annual US births named Jeremy by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1977 with 21,611 boys named Jeremy (boy rank #15 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #292 for boys (1,152 US births). That's 277 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 Jeremy 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 Jeremy the strongest states are New York, New Jersey, Maryland.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #136 | 1,450 |
| 2 | New Jersey | #136 | 677 |
| 3 | Maryland | #138 | 441 |
| 4 | District of Columbia | #151 | 60 |
| 5 | Rhode Island | #151 | 72 |
| 6 | Delaware | #166 | 38 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | #170 | 376 |
| 8 | Louisiana | #180 | 313 |
| 9 | Virginia | #185 | 487 |
| 10 | Connecticut | #188 | 177 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jeremy in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jerry | Abbreviation Of Names Beginning With Jer- See Also Gerry. | Male | English |
Famous People Named Jeremy
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Jeremy.
- Jeremy Bentham was a renowned philosopher.
- Jeremy Piven — TV Actor (1965)
Looking for names like Jeremy?
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 Jeremy to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jeremy against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).