Jesica
Feminine
Jesica has one s where the standard spelling has two, and in English that is a small oddity. In Spanish it is not an oddity at all — Spanish does not double its s, so Jesica and Yesica are the ordinary way the name is written wherever Spanish is spoken. The name itself is younger than most: it was made up for a play.
How old is the name Jesica?
Jesica first appears in US birth records in 1966 — 59 years ago. The typical Jesica alive today was born around 1989, making them about 36 years old. About 4,600 people named Jesica are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jesica most popular?
Jesica peaked in 1987, reaching #754 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 14,188 places below that high. See the whole 1987 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Iscah to Jesica
The story of Jesica
Jessica first appears as the daughter of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and for two centuries after that it barely existed outside the play. That is the ordinary fate of a coined name: it takes a long time, or a second push, to become ordinary. Jessica got its push much later and became one of the most-used women's names in the English-speaking world within a generation. The spellings multiplied on the way, and this one had two separate reasons to appear — English speakers dropping a letter, and Spanish speakers writing the name according to their own rules, where a doubled s simply does not occur.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Shakespeare appears to have invented Jessica, and inventions do not have etymologies in the usual sense. The likeliest source is a name in Genesis, written Iscah in English Bibles and rendered Jescha in the version Shakespeare would have known, which is close enough in shape to be the model. What Iscah itself meant is not established either — a connection to a Hebrew verb about looking or seeing is proposed and not proven. So the name has a documented birth and an undocumented meaning, which is an unusual combination.
How the name formed
- Iscah
- Jessica
- Jesica
Related forms: Yésica · Jésica · Jéssica · Jessica
Pronouncing Jesica
JESS-ih-kuh
JESS-ih-kuh in English, three syllables, stress at the front — a single s is said exactly like a double one in this position. Spanish gives it a different opening consonant, closer to YEH-see-kah, and that is the reading a Spanish-speaking room will reach for first.
Nicknames for Jesica
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
- 1966
- Most girls named
- 1988213 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #754reached in 1987
- Change vs 2022
- −61.5%5 in 2025, from 13
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.
Jesica in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Yésica in Spanish — transliteration
- Jésica in Spanish — spelling variant
- Jéssica in Portuguese — same name
- Jessica in Italian — same name
Jesicas among us
people named Jesica are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Jesica
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 Irine test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jesica's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Irine climbed just as high around 1910, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Irine's path sketches the road Jesica is walking now.
Jesica 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
Jesica beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jesica in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is the standard Spanish spelling of the name rather than an error, which matters in a bilingual household.
- The sound is universally familiar and needs no introduction anywhere in the English-speaking world.
- Jess and Jessie are both waiting inside it and both are fully established.
- In English-language settings the single s reads as a typo, and it will be silently corrected by software and by people.
- The name is very strongly associated with one generation of American women, and it has not yet come back around.
- Two languages say the first letter differently, so a bilingual child will answer to two noticeably different versions of the same name.
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What they receive
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Jesica
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jesicas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,600 people named Jesica are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Jesica in 2025?
- Jesica ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jesica?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Jesica — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jesica with classmates?
- Jesica will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jesica
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 Jesica? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jesica and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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