Justin

668,566 people in America carry this name — ranked #55 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Millennials.

Say it JUHS tuhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

JH AH1 S T AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 668,566 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 221.4 about 1 in 496 people

What Justin means and where it comes from

Latin in origin, reading literally as “just”.

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.

How often Justin has been given

784,658 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1988, with 35,289 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. 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 Justin

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Justin John — same opening
  • Justin James — same opening
  • Justin 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

Justin has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Millennials.

Is Justin used for boys or for girls?

99.8% men
1,585 women

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

Full names people carry

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.

The states where Justin is most common

In Wyoming the name is given 1.9 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Wyoming ×1.9
  • Vermont ×1.6
  • Hawaii ×1.5
  • Montana ×1.5
  • North Dakota ×1.4

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 same name elsewhere

  • Just German
  • Justs Lett
  • Juste French
  • Justa
  • Justyn Polish
  • Justino Spanish
  • Justine Fr.|Ger
  • Justina Eng.|Span
  • Justinus
  • Justinien French
  • Justinian Ger.|Eng

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.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

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 Latin origin