Jermaine
- Pronunciation
- [Jer-maine]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Brotherly. Variant Of Germaine. Singer Jermaine Jackson.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Jermaine
Jermaine is an English variant of Germaine, a name rooted in the Latin Germanus meaning "brotherly" or "of the same parents" — a kinship term that became a personal name through early Christian usage, most notably associated with Saint Germain of Paris, the sixth-century bishop whose sanctity made the name a fixture in French and European naming for centuries. The shift from Germaine to Jermaine reflects a phonetic Anglicization that became distinctively popular in African American naming culture from the 1970s onward, giving the name a new cultural identity while preserving its fraternal meaning.
In the US Social Security top-1000, Jermaine first appeared in 2000 and peaked the following year, reaching #434 in 2001. It maintained a consistent presence through two decades, last charting in 2019 at #999 with 210 births, accumulating 8,694 total top-1000 births. The 2017 and 2018 figures — 276 births at #817 and 261 births at #850 — show the name holding a loyal base before its final fade from the top-1000.
Jermaine carries a warm, three-syllable rhythm that has long given it a musical, flowing quality. Its cultural associations and the kinship meaning embedded in its root give it a depth that purely invented names lack. Recorded variants include Germain, Germaine, Jermain, Jermane, and Jermayne — a cluster that spans both the French original and its English and American adaptations, offering families a range of visual options for the same resonant sound.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Jermaine
US Popularity History (2000–2019)
Annual US births named Jermaine by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2003 with 572 boys named Jermaine (boy rank #439 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2019, ranked #999 for boys (210 US births). That's 560 places below its 2003 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 Jermaine 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 Jermaine the strongest states are Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | #458 | 43 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #461 | 49 |
| 3 | Louisiana | #546 | 85 |
| 4 | South Carolina | #586 | 43 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #695 | 35 |
| 6 | Florida | #729 | 124 |
| 7 | Georgia | #753 | 123 |
| 8 | Maryland | #765 | 35 |
| 9 | Missouri | #779 | 26 |
| 10 | Indiana | #786 | 29 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Jermaine in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germain | German | Male | French |
| Germaine | Loud Of Voice | Female | Celtic |
| Jermain | Brotherly. Variant Of Germaine. Singer Jermaine Jackson. | Male | English |
| Jermane | Brotherly. Variant Of Germaine. Singer Jermaine Jackson. | Male | English |
| Jermayne | Brotherly. Variant Of Germaine. Singer Jermaine Jackson. | Male | English |
Looking for names like Jermaine?
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 Jermaine to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Jermaine against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).