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Jay

198,132 recorded births · active 1880–2025

Compare Jay →

Living-age distribution

The median living Jay is 57. If you meet a Jay, there's about a 70% chance they're between 27 and 71 years old.

Popularity arc

Peak Jay: 1960. Down 80% from peak.

Projected: the dashed 10-year forecast (Holt damped-trend exponential smoothing, fit to recent years), with a shaded 95% interval.

Gender balance

Jay is almost always given to male babies — 98.8% male.

98.8%male
Male98.8%
Female1.2%

Rarity

Jay ranks #397 out of 105,966 names ever recorded by the SSA.

99.6%more common
Commonness rank#397of 105,966

Name neighbors

People named Jay have popularity-curve siblings named:

KarlDavidCurtisLeslieNeal

Geographic fingerprint

Jays are 1.3x more common in the Midwest than the national average.

Under-indexed
Over-indexed
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Predictive modeling

Three statistical models, all fit to Jay's own SSA history plus the historical behavior of every other name in the dataset.

Peak popularity prediction

Jay's modeled peak was #165 in 1962 — its trend isn't projected to beat that.

Top 1000 Reached in 1880
Top 500 Reached in 1880
Top 100
0% chance
Top 50
0% chance
Top 10
0% chance

Projects the trend forward, then converts share into rank using this year's popularity distribution.

This forecasts Jay's share of births by fitting a damped-trend model to its last 146 years of data and projecting 10 years forward with a widening uncertainty band. Each projected share is then translated into a rank by comparing it against 2025's actual name-popularity distribution — so the model implicitly assumes the overall shape of that distribution doesn't shift much over the forecast window. Its trend is projected to stay below its historic best over the next 10 years, so the model treats 1962 as its peak. Milestone probabilities come from how much of each year's uncertainty band clears that milestone's rank, combined across years as if they were independent — which slightly overstates the odds for names sitting right at a threshold, since a good year is usually followed by another good year rather than an independent coin flip.

Name life-cycle stage

A rule-based classifier over recent growth, momentum, and peak proximity.

Growing

Jay's popularity has been gently rising in recent years without yet approaching its historic peak.

65
years since peak
→ stable
overall trend
30+ years
estimated time left in top 1000

Popularity survival model

Once a name reaches a rank tier, how long does it typically stay there before falling out?

Built from a Kaplan-Meier survival curve: every historical run any name has ever had above this tier, with runs still ongoing today counted as still in progress rather than as an exit.

Jay isn't currently in the Top 100 tier. Estimated chance of entering it in the forecast window: 0%.

If Jay enters Top 100, chance it's still there after:

71%
5 years
63%
10 years
48%
20 years

Names that do enter Top 100 have historically stayed a median of ~19 years. Based on 668 historical Top 100 runs across every name in the dataset.