Benjamine
Masculine · “son of the right hand”
The added e makes a man's name look like a woman's. English uses a final e on Josephine, Caroline and Geraldine to mark exactly that, so a reader meeting this spelling will make the assumption automatically — and the record shows it holding steady on the men's side regardless.
How old is the name Benjamine?
Benjamine was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Benjamine alive today was born around 1959, making them about 66 years old. About 1,000 people named Benjamine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Benjamine most popular?
Benjamine peaked in 1881, reaching #416 nationally. See the whole 1881 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Binyamin to Benjamine
The story of Benjamine
The tribe named for him was nearly wiped out and the survivors were supplied with wives by abduction. The book of Judges ends with a civil war in which the other tribes come close to exterminating them entirely, then regret it, having sworn not to give them their own daughters — and solve the problem by authorizing the surviving men to seize women from a festival. The text reports all of this without comment and closes with a line about everyone doing what was right in their own eyes. It is the bleakest ending any book of the collection has.
Meaning
son of the right hand
Hebrew, and the right hand is the side of favor. The added letter does not touch the sense; it changes only what a reader expects before they get to the rest of the sentence.
How the name formed
- Binyamin
- Benjamin
- Benjamine
Related forms: Benjamin · Benjamín
Pronouncing Benjamine
BEN-juh-min
Three syllables with the stress at the front. The final e is silent and adds nothing audible to the standard form.
Nicknames for Benjamine
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 191935 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #416reached in 1881
- Change vs 2013
- −37.5%5 in 2018, from 8
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Benjamine in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Benjamin in French — same name
- Benjamín in Spanish — same name
Benjamines among us
people named Benjamine are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Benjamine sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Ben sits inside it as a short form that works at any age.
- The name underneath is among the most durable in the West.
- The meaning is warm and easy to explain.
- The added e will be read as a feminine marker by nearly everybody.
- Benjamin is overwhelmingly standard and this gets corrected for life.
- The generation that used this spelling is now very old.
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Benjamine
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Frequently asked
- How many Benjamines are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Benjamine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Benjamine in 2025?
- Benjamine is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Benjamine with classmates?
- Benjamine will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More B names
The most-given names starting with B, all years combined.
Brian#339 · Benjamin#11 · Brandon#261 · Bryan#336 · Bruce#536 · Billy#1068 · Bobby#1097 · Bradley#403
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Benjamine? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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