Jerry
369,611 people in America carry this name — ranked #132 of 923.
Carried mostly by the Baby Boomers.
Say it JEH ree
2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part
Phonetic transcription
JH EH1 R IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.
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People counted 369,611 2020 Census
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Rank #132 Common
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Per 100,000 122.4 about 1 in 897 people
What Jerry means and where it comes from
Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “exalted of the Lord”.
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.
Jerry through the years
630,840 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1947, with 19,258 of them.
Most people carrying it were born in the 1940s. 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.
Middle names for Jerry
Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.
- Jerry Michael
- Jerry David
- Jerry Robert
- Jerry William
- Jerry Daniel
- Jerry Richard
- Jerry Thomas
- Jerry Christopher
Better avoided
- Jerry John — same opening
- Jerry James — same opening
- Jerry Joseph — 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.
Going quiet
Jerry has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.
Is Jerry a boy's or a girl's name?
As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.
Where the name Jerry is most common in the US
In Mississippi the name is given 3.0 times as often as it is across the country.
- Mississippi ×3.0
- Arkansas ×2.6
- West Virginia ×2.3
- Alabama ×2.1
- Tennessee ×2.1
Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.
The likeliest full names
- Jerry Johnson ≈ 2,100 people
- Jerry Jones ≈ 1,500 people
- Jerry Garcia ≈ 1,300 people
- Jerry Miller ≈ 1,300 people
- Jerry Davis ≈ 1,200 people
- Jerry Wilson ≈ 900 people
- Jerry Anderson ≈ 800 people
- Jerry Thomas ≈ 800 people
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.
This name in other languages
- Mies Swiss
- Jeremy English
- Jeremie Fr.|Wall
- Jeremej Russian
- Geremia Italian
- Jeremija Russ.|Serv
- Jeremias Fr.|Eng
- Jeremiah Ger.|Slov
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 with the same rhythm as Jerry
Ends on the same sound
- Michael 3,476,721
- David 2,813,017
- Robert 2,759,339
- William 2,240,114
- Daniel 1,607,193
- Joseph 1,600,667
- Richard 1,575,998
- Thomas 1,506,606
- Matthew 1,315,151
- Andrew 1,075,513
Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.
Who carries it today
- White alone (non-Hispanic) — 77.0%
- Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 11.3%
- Hispanic or Latino origin — 5.6%
- Two or more races — 2.5%
- Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.6%
- American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%
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.
Try it Full-Name Estimator
Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.
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