Jesi
Feminine · “gift”
Jesi is given to both — 562 girls and 38 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Jesi is a short form written the short way. Through the middle of the twentieth century American naming trimmed the familiar -ie and -y endings down to a bare i — Jodi, Lori, Toni, Kari, Jesi — and the change was purely visual. The name underneath is Jesse or Jessica depending on the household, and both trace back to the same Hebrew name.
How old is the name Jesi?
Jesi first appears in US birth records in 1977 — 48 years ago. The typical Jesi alive today was born around 1993, making them about 32 years old. About 600 people named Jesi are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jesi most popular?
Jesi peaked in 1989, reaching #3784 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 11,158 places below that high. See the whole 1989 chart.
Where it comes from
From Yishai to Jesi
The story of Jesi
Jesse was a Puritan name in England and then a frontier name in America, given steadily and mostly to boys, and it produced the pet forms Jess and Jessie the way any short name does. Jessica arrived from an entirely different direction — the stage — and produced the same short forms. By the twentieth century Jessie and Jess were serving both, and the sex of the name had drifted toward girls in the process. The bare i spelling came last. It belongs to a particular American moment in which a great many women's names dropped their final e, and it made a nickname look like a full name on a form, which is roughly what it was for.
Meaningscholars disagree
gift
Hebrew Yishai, anglicized as Jesse, is the father of King David, and its meaning is genuinely unsettled — gift is the most common reading, and a connection to a word for existence or being is also proposed, and neither is secure. If this Jesi comes instead from Jessica, the trail is different: Jessica is a Shakespearean coinage, probably built on a name in Genesis, and it carries no agreed meaning of its own. Either way the name arrives at an honest shrug rather than a translation.
How the name formed
- Yishai
- Jesse
- Jessie
- Jesi
Related forms: יִשַׁי · Isaí
Pronouncing Jesi
JESS-ee
JESS-ee, two syllables, stress at the front. The bare i at the end is a long e sound, exactly as in Jodi and Lori. A reader who has not met the convention may try JESS-eye, which is the one saying nobody uses.
Nicknames for Jesi
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
- 1977
- Most girls named
- 198926 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3784reached in 1989
- Change vs 2023
- 0.0%5 in 2025, from 5
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.
Jesi in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- יִשַׁי in Hebrew — transliteration
- Isaí in Spanish — same name
Jesis among us
people named Jesi are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Jesi
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Elecia test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jesi's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Elecia climbed just as high around 1962, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Elecia's path sketches the road Jesi is walking now.
Jesi 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
Jesi beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jesi in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Four letters and no ambiguity in the sound; it is about as easy to say as an English name gets.
- It works for either child, and it is one of the few short names that genuinely does.
- Jess sits inside it as a fully grown-up alternative for anyone who tires of the ending.
- Jessie and Jessi are both far more common spellings of the same sound, and this one will be rewritten as either.
- It reads as a nickname rather than a full name, which matters more on paper than in conversation.
- The bare i ending places the name in a specific American period fairly precisely.
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What they receive
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Jesi
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jesis 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 Jesi are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Jesi in 2025?
- Jesi ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jesi?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Jesi — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jesi with classmates?
- Jesi will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jesi
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jesi? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jesi and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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