Essex
#4,757 in 2025Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Essex has been given to 443 babies in the U.S. since 1882. In 2025 it ranked #4,757 of 13,926 boys’ names in use. Its peak year was 2025, with 21 recorded.
Babies named Essex, 2025
1 in 158,000
Essex over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Essex?
Everything below is computed from the 2025 data — the most recent year available.
- Among all babies, 2025
- 1 in 158,000
- 21 of 3,315,165 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 81,300
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 2025
- #4,757
- of 13,926 boys’ names in use
- Coin-flip room size
- 109,425 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Essex sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2025 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 109,425 children born in 2025 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Essex. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Essexs were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Essex was born before 1951 — so the typical Essex is around 74 today.
- Biggest decade
- 2020s
- 17.7% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 29.2%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 222
- People you could plausibly meet
2020s — 17.7% of all recorded uses (77).
Is Essex rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- +746
- Places climbed
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- +6,340
- Places climbed
- Births vs 10 years ago
- 3.50×
- More babies than then
- Share of its own peak
- 100.0%
- Peak was 2025 (21)
- Years since peak
- Peaking now
- At its all-time high
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Shifting
- 16.0% average annual change
Spellings of Essex
Essex is not the most common spelling — Jesse is, with 96.8% against Essex's 0.10%.
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Where Essex is used
Across 1910–2025, Essex was most concentrated in New Jersey — about 1 in — boys, against 1 in 960,846 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1New Jersey1 in —
Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Essex has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Essex by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
As a boy's name
Names similar to Essex
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Essex
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.