Ben

107,539 people in America carry this name — ranked #526 of 923.

Its American moment came before the war.

Say it BEHN

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

B EH1 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 107,539 2020 Census
  • Rank #526 Common
  • Per 100,000 35.6 about 1 in 3,082 people
  • As a surname 3,170 ranked #9,765 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Ben

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “son of the right hand”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Ben through the years

84,203 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1918, with 1,293 of them.

80 90 00 10 20s 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Ben

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Ben Brian — same opening
  • Ben Nicholas — runs together
  • Ben Benjamin — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Ben was 1918. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

Is Ben a boy's or a girl's name?

99.6% men
392 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The same name abroad

  • Benjie Scottish
  • Benjamin English
  • Benjamino Italian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 76.9%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 5.8%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 7.1%
  • Two or more races — 2.9%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 6.4%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.8%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Compare Two Names

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One of those is not in the census file.

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin