Bess — girls' name

What the Data Says About Bess

The Social Security Administration has registered 7,166 babies named Bess between 1880 and 2022, spanning 143 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Bess currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2022. The name reached its historical peak in 1889, when 182 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Bess performed strongest in the 1890s, accumulating 1,526 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Bess shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in New York, which accounts for 213 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and Illinois. In total, SSA state-level files list Bess in 21 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Bess in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 7,166 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.