Tess — #1771 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Tess

The Social Security Administration has registered 14,653 babies named Tess between 1889 and 2024, spanning 136 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Tess currently holds the #1771 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1992, when 529 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Tess performed strongest in the 1990s, accumulating 4,557 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Tess shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 1,481 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and Massachusetts. In total, SSA state-level files list Tess in 44 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Tess 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 14,653 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.