Hester — girls' name

What the Data Says About Hester

The Social Security Administration has registered 14,222 babies named Hester between 1880 and 2023, spanning 144 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Hester currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2023. The name reached its historical peak in 1918, when 394 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Hester performed strongest in the 1910s, accumulating 3,111 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Hester shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in North Carolina, which accounts for 676 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Kentucky and Virginia. In total, SSA state-level files list Hester in 30 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Hester 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 14,222 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.