Jacobs
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Jacobs is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Denmark it is the 12th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: patronymic from the personal name Jacob.
- ATAustria1 in 213◐
- DKDenmark1 in 289
- ZASouth Africa1 in 405
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈874K ●
- #677 ●
- 5 ●
- Sources
- 570 ●
- 1 in 289 ◐
across 12 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
4.4M records
Official registry-verified
Denmark
Spellings & scripts●
2 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Jacob in US United States, NL Netherlands, DK Denmark and 8 more, Jakob in DE Germany, AT Austria, NO Norway and 4 more, Yaakov in IL Israel, BR Brazil and Იაკობ in GE Georgia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
patronymic from the personal name Jacob. As a Jewish surname it has also assimilated various other patronymics from the same personal name, as for example Jacobowitz.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #195 | 804,558 | 3.5M rec. | 1 in 413 | 805K | Jacob | 570 |
| AU Australia | #124 | 199,839 | 109K rec. | — | 372 | Jacob | 273 |
| GB United Kingdom | #315 | 160,459 | 122K rec. | — | 1.5K | Jacob | 249 |
| DE Germany | #231 | 130,282 | 150K rec. | — | listed | Jakob | 232 |
| CA Canada | #133 | 119,227 | 56K rec. | — | 83 | Jacob | 221 |
| ZA South Africa | #63 | 77,583 | 76K rec. | — | — | Jacobs | 150 |
| AT Austria | #35 | 76,423 | 6.5K rec. | — | 21K | Jakob | 148 |
| BE Belgium | — | 69,204 | 10K rec. | — | 20K | Jacobs | 139 |
| NG Nigeria | #165 | 40,128 | 60K rec. | — | — | Jacob | 110 |
| PH Philippines | #558 | 39,726 | 26K rec. | — | — | Jacob | 121 |
| DK Denmark | #12 | 20,316 | 18K rec. | 1 in 289 | 20K | Jacob | 196 |
| SE Sweden | #92 | 15,821 | 13K rec. | 1 in 645 | 16K | Jakob | 134 |
Roughly 805K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 413). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English1.3M76%
- German61K4%
- Dutch55K3%
- Spanish46K3%
- 44K3%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 1,257,377 | 76% |
| German | 61,021 | 4% |
| Dutch | 54,741 | 3% |
| Spanish | 46,220 | 3% |
| 43,647 | 3% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Jacobs is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An English surname originating as a patronymic derived from Jacob.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, 'Son of Jacob'.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In German, Patronymische Bildung mit -s zu Jacob; norddeutsche Variante. Bearer count: 9405.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Hebrew-origin surname meaning "supplanter"; common at the Cape.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In Dutch, a surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1983 | 6 |
| 1986 | 5 |
| 1988 | 7 |
| 1991 | 7 |
| 1992 | 5 |
| 1995 | 5 |
| 1996 | 5 |
| 2001 | 5 |
| 2008 | 11 |
| 2013 | 7 |
| 2015 | 6 |
| 2017 | 5 |
| 2019 | 7 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 13 years between 1983–2019. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Helen Jacobsb. 1908USAmerican tennis player (1908–1997)
- Arthur P. Jacobsb. 1922USpress agent (1922-1973)
- Jill Bidenb. 1951USnot in their usual nameAmerican educator and First Lady of the United States from 2021 to 2025
- Lawrence Hilton-Jacobsb. 1953USAmerican actor
- Marc Jacobsb. 1963USAmerican fashion designer (born 1963)
- Glenn Jacobsb. 1967USAmerican professional wrestler, actor, and politician
- Gillian Jacobsb. 1982USAmerican film, theater and television actress
- Devery Jacobsb. 1993CACanadian actress (born 1993)
- Marcell Jacobsb. 1994ITItalian athlete (born 1994)
- Chosen Jacobsb. 2001USAmerican actor, singer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 54 sources across 33 countries.
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 113 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Jacobs?
- We estimate roughly 874 thousand people bear Jacobs (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Jacobs have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 805 thousand people bear Jacobs in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled jacob.
- How common is Jacobs compared with other names?
- In the United States, Jacobs is the 195th most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Jacobs mean?
- Recorded meaning: patronymic from the personal name Jacob.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jacobsThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Jacobs” — the 195th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.