Jiri
A masculine Czech name derived from the Greek meaning "husbandman" or "farmer".
Name Census estimates that about 16 living Americans carry the first name Jiri. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Jiri today is around 18 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Jiri births was 2008 (6 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Jiri. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
Key insights
- • Fewer than 100 living Americans are believed to carry the name Jiri. It is among the rarest names in the SSA records.
People living today
16
~ 1 in 21,422,146 Americans
Peak year
2008
6 babies that year
Average age
18
years old
2012 SSA rank
#13,150
Tracked since 2005
Popularity
Jiri: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Jiri from the 2000s through to the 2010s, spanning 2 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 2000s, with 11 total registrations. Although the numbers have come down from the 2000s peak, Jiri remains solidly in use and shows no sign of disappearing from maternity wards.
Babies born per year
Decades
Jiri by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Jiri during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Origin
Meaning and history of Jiri
The name Jiri is of Czech origin and has been in use since the Middle Ages. It is a diminutive form of the Slavic name Jiří, which is derived from the Greek name Georgios, meaning "farmer" or "earth-worker". The name Georgios comes from the Greek word "georgos", which means "earth-worker" or "farmer".
The name Jiri became popular in the Czech lands after the canonization of St. George, who was a Christian martyr from the 3rd century AD. St. George is revered as the patron saint of various professions, including soldiers and farmers, and his cult spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages.
One of the earliest recorded examples of the name Jiri can be found in the 14th century Czech literary work "Dalimilova kronika" (Dalimil's Chronicle), which mentions a Bohemian nobleman named Jiri of Mirovice. Another notable bearer of the name was Jiri of Poděbrady (1420-1471), who was the King of Bohemia from 1458 to 1471.
In the 16th century, the Czech Protestant reformer Jan Amos Komenský (1592-1670), better known by his Latin name Comenius, had a son named Jiri. The famous Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) also had a son named Jiri.
Other notable historical figures with the name Jiri include Jiri Trnka (1912-1969), a Czech puppeteer and filmmaker who is considered one of the pioneers of stop-motion animation, and Jiri Menzel (1938-2020), a Czech film director and actor who won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his 1966 movie "Closely Watched Trains".
Jiri Dienstbier (1937-2011) was a Czech journalist and politician who played a significant role in the Velvet Revolution that overthrew the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Jiri Hajek (1919-2007) was a Czech diplomat who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia from 1988 to 1992, during the turbulent period of the Velvet Revolution and the subsequent dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Jiri
People
Jiri + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Jiri as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with J
Other first names starting with J with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Jiri: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Jiri?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 16 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Jiri going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 21,422,146 US residents.
Is Jiri a common name?
We classify Jiri as "Very Rare". It ranks above 36.5% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 16 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Jiri most popular?
The single biggest year for Jiri was 2008, when 6 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Jiri is about 18 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
Is Jiri a male name?
Yes, 100.0% of people registered as Jiri in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.