Jacoby
Masculine · “son of Jacob”
Jacoby is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 11,161 boys against 120 girls since 1880.
Jacoby is a surname first — the Latin genitive of Jacob, meaning "of Jacob's family," carried on German, Dutch and Jewish rolls for centuries before it was ever handed to a baby as a first name. That gives it an unusual shape in English: a name with one of the oldest roots in the Western world and a very American, very recent second life. Say it aloud and Jacob is still audible inside it, with an extra beat on the end.
How old is the name Jacoby?
Jacoby first appears in US birth records in 1959 — 66 years ago. The typical Jacoby alive today was born around 2009, making them about 16 years old. About 11,000 people named Jacoby are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jacoby most popular?
Jacoby peaked in 2008, reaching #422 nationally. Today it ranks #1425, 1,003 places below that high. See the whole 2008 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Ya'aqov to Jacoby
The story of Jacoby
The root is the Hebrew Ya'aqov, which reached Europe through the Greek Iakobos and the Latin Iacobus and became one of the most widely used names on the continent. When surnames formed, that Latin genitive — Iacobi, "of Jacob" — hardened into family names across German-speaking Europe and the Low Countries, spelled Jacobi, Jacoby and Jakoby, and it traveled to the United States with those families. Jacoby then joined the long American habit of moving surnames to the front, the same road walked by Emerson, Harrison and Tyler. Its strongest footing is in the South and West, and it has been visible in American sport in recent decades.
Meaning
son of Jacob
Jacoby is a patronymic built on Jacob, from the Latin form Iacobus. The meaning of Jacob itself is genuinely contested: it has long been read as "holder of the heel" or "supplanter," from the Hebrew word for heel, and also as a shortened form of a name meaning "may God protect." Both readings are taken seriously.
How the name formed
- Ya'aqov
- Iakobos
- Iacobus
- Jacob
- Jacoby
Related forms: Jacobi · Jakoby · Jacob · Jakob · Ya'aqov · Jacques
Pronouncing Jacoby
JAY-kuh-bee
Three syllables, stress on the first, ending in a clear "ee." The German surname Jacoby is often heard as ya-KO-bee, but in the United States the Jacob-based JAY-kuh-bee is standard.
Nicknames for Jacoby
High
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
- 1959
- Most boys named
- 2008691 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #422reached in 2008
- Change vs 2024
- −13.7%126 in 2025, from 146
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.
Jacoby in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Jacobi in German — spelling variant
- Jakoby in Polish — spelling variant
- Jacob in English — related form
- Jakob in German — related form
- Ya'aqov in Hebrew — transliteration
- Jacques in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Jacobys among us
people named Jacoby are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 13,556 born in 2025 was named Jacoby
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Jacoby
- #1425
- Jacoby on the 2025 chart
- #630
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Jacoby went to 126 boys in 2025, but Jakobi, Jacobi and Jakoby are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 314, which makes it the 630th most-given boys’ name of the year — 795 places above the chart.
About 1 boy in 5,440 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 13,556 for Jacoby itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Denver test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jacoby's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Denver climbed just as high around 1919, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Denver's path sketches the road Jacoby is walking now.
Jacoby sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Jacoby is headed
Jacoby is easing off slowly — about 21% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Jacoby beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jacoby in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The spelling is self-explanatory once heard, because almost everyone already knows Jacob.
- Two well-established short forms ready to go: Jake and Coby, both of which stand alone as names.
- Its root is one of the longest continuously used names in the Western world, documented in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
- Cousins exist in German, Polish, Dutch and Hebrew, so the family it belongs to is recognized well beyond English.
- It will be heard as Jacob and written as Jacob a fair amount, especially over the phone. Expect to correct it, gently and often.
- The rival spelling Jacobi is the older surname form, so a second correction sometimes follows the first.
- Most people carrying this name in the US are still young, so it reads as a name of recent decades rather than an heirloom — even though the surname behind it is centuries old.
- A Jacoby is unlikely to share the name with a classmate, which some children love and others would rather not carry.
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Jacoby
Masculine · #1425 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jacobys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 11,000 people named Jacoby are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Jacoby?
- Jacoby is the most-used spelling in US records — 126 of the 314 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Jakobi, Jacobi and Jakoby.
- How popular is the name Jacoby in 2025?
- Jacoby ranks #1425 among US boy names in 2025, with 126 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jacoby?
- About 1 in every 13,556 US boys born in 2025 was named Jacoby — 126 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jacoby with classmates?
- Jacoby will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jacoby
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Jessie#1425 · Zack#1425 · Dev#1425 · Finneas#1425 · Rush#1425 · Aleksander#1425 · Haze#1425 · Orson#1425
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jacoby? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jacoby and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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