Find out how popular the last name Jacobi is in the United States and learn more about the meaning, history, and race and ethnic origin of people in America who are named Jacobi.

Jacobi, like all of the last names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Jacobi surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Jacobi in America

Jacobi is the 9161st most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Jacobi surname appeared 3,563 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 1 people would have the surname Jacobi.

We can also compare 2010 data for Jacobi to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.

The history of the last name Jacobi

The surname Jacobi originated in Germany during the Middle Ages. It is derived from the Hebrew name Jacob, which means "supplanter" or "one who follows." The name was widely adopted across Europe during the spread of Christianity.

Jacobi is a patronymic surname, meaning it was originally formed by adding a suffix to the given name Jacob to indicate "son of Jacob." In German, the suffix -i or -y was commonly used to create these surnames. Variations of the spelling include Jakobi, Jacoby, and Jacobs.

One of the earliest recorded instances of the name Jacobi can be found in the Codex Diplomaticus, a collection of medieval documents from the 13th century, which mentions a "Henricus Jacobi" in Saxony. The name also appears in church records and tax rolls from various regions of Germany during this time period.

In the 14th century, the surname Jacobi was associated with several notable individuals, including Johannes Jacobi, a German theologian and scholar who lived from 1305 to 1384, and Nicolaus Jacobi, a German astronomer and mathematician born in 1363.

During the Renaissance, the Jacobi name gained further prominence. One of the most famous bearers of the name was the German philosopher and mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, who lived from 1804 to 1851 and made significant contributions to the fields of mathematics and theoretical physics.

Other notable individuals with the surname Jacobi include the German novelist and dramatist Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819), the Swiss-German philosopher and theologian Friedrich Justin Jacobi (1743-1819), and the German painter and printmaker Otto Jacobi (1803-1855).

In the 19th century, the Jacobi surname spread to other parts of Europe and beyond, with individuals bearing the name leaving their mark in various fields, such as the German-American composer Frederick Jacobi (1891-1952) and the Russian-American physicist Boris Jacobi (1892-1973).

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Jacobi

We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Jacobi.

The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups:

1. White only
2. Black only
3. American Indian and Alaskan Native only
4. Asian and Pacific Islander only
5. Hispanic
6. Two or More Races

For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Jacobi was:

Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.

Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Jacobi has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.

Data source

The last name data and ethnic breakdown of last names is sourced directly from the Decennial Census survey, conducted every 10 years by the United States Census Bureau.

The history and meaning of the name Jacobi was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

If you have a correction or suggestion to improve the history of Jacobi, please contact us.

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