Jemimah
Feminine · “dove”
Jemimah is the first of the three daughters born to Job after his suffering ends, and the text pauses to say that no women in the land were as beautiful. It is one of the few names in scripture attached to a moment of restoration rather than a trial.
How old is the name Jemimah?
Jemimah first appears in US birth records in 1980 — 45 years ago. The typical Jemimah is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 600 people named Jemimah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jemimah most popular?
Jemimah peaked in 2018, reaching #4458 nationally. Today it ranks #6325, 1,867 places below that high. See the whole 2018 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Yemimah to Jemimah
The story of Jemimah
The name enters English with the sixteenth and seventeenth century Bible translations and was used steadily by Puritan and later Nonconformist families, who favored the minor Old Testament women other traditions passed over. The h-final spelling is the one that follows the Hebrew consonant most closely, and it is the form that stayed in use across Britain, and later across Kenya, Nigeria and India, where Anglican and evangelical missions carried it. In the United States the h-less Jemima was attached to a pancake trademark from 1889 until its retirement in 2021, which suppressed both spellings for a century. American use of Jemimah today is largely a re-import from those other English-speaking countries, and its best year on record is 2018.
Meaningscholars disagree
dove
The usual reading connects Hebrew yemimah to the Arabic yamama, a dove, and that is the gloss most reference works give. A second line reads it as day or daytime, from yom, making the sisters a set of light-names alongside Keziah and Keren-happuch. Neither is proven from Hebrew alone; the dove reading is the older and more widely printed one.
How the name formed
- Yemimah
- Iemima
- Jemima
- Jemimah
Related forms: Yemimah · Jemima · Yemima
Pronouncing Jemimah
juh-MY-muh
Three syllables, stress on the long middle i. The final h is silent in English and marks the Hebrew consonant rather than a sound.
Nicknames for Jemimah
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
- 1980
- Most girls named
- 201531 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4458reached in 2018
- Change vs 2024
- −37.9%18 in 2025, from 29
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.
Jemimah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Yemimah in Hebrew — same name
- Jemima in French — spelling variant
- Yemima in Swahili — transliteration
Jemimahs among us
people named Jemimah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 89,293 born in 2025 was named Jemimah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Jemimah
- #6325
- Jemimah on the 2025 chart
- #899
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Jemimah went to 18 girls in 2025, but Jemima is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 61, which makes it the 899th most-given girls’ name of the year — 5,426 places above the chart.
- Jemima43
- Jemimah18
About 1 girl in 26,349 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 89,293 for Jemimah 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 Rifka test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jemimah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Rifka climbed just as high around 1974, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Rifka's path sketches the road Jemimah is walking now.
Jemimah 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
Jemimah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jemimah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A scriptural name with a warm context: it belongs to the end of the book of Job, not to a catastrophe in it.
- Well established across Britain, East and West Africa and the Caribbean, so it is familiar far outside the United States.
- Yields several unrelated-sounding nicknames, which gives a child room to choose.
- Older Americans may still hear the pancake brand, though it left shelves in 2021.
- The h-less Jemima is the default spelling in most reference books and in Beatrix Potter, so the final h will be dropped for you often.
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What they receive
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Jemimah
Feminine · #6325 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jemimahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Jemimah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Jemimah?
- Jemimah is one of 2 recorded spellings. Jemima is the more common one — 43 births in 2025 against 18 for Jemimah.
- How popular is the name Jemimah in 2025?
- Jemimah ranks #6325 among US girl names in 2025, with 18 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jemimah?
- About 1 in every 89,293 US girls born in 2025 was named Jemimah — 18 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jemimah with classmates?
- Jemimah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jemimah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaye#6325 · Doria#6325 · Karolyn#6325 · Rosaleen#6325 · Roni#6325 · Darian#6325 · Svetlana#6325 · Fanny#6325
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jemimah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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