Bob
#9,714 in the US in 2025
Bob in the United States
Between 2015 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 44% as a share of boys' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Bob in New Zealand
Bob never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #244 | 46 |
| 1890 | #226 | 53 |
| 1900 | #196 | 98 |
| 1910 | #229 | 103 |
| 1920 | #189 | 710 |
| 1930 | #88 | 2,242 |
| 1940 | #99 | 2,082 |
| 1950 | #204 | 976 |
| 1960 | #131 | 2,719 |
| 1970 | #399 | 406 |
| 1980 | #859 | 106 |
| 1990 | #1,564 | 53 |
| 2000 | #2,864 | 31 |
| 2010 | #7,591 | 10 |
| 2020 | #6,620 | 12 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Bob most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| California | 12,158 |
| Illinois | 6,191 |
| Ohio | 5,419 |
| Texas | 4,798 |
| Missouri | 4,584 |
| Michigan | 4,212 |
| Oklahoma | 4,127 |
| Washington | 3,478 |
| Indiana | 3,336 |
| Iowa | 2,893 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026