Jimi
Meaning
supplanter (pet form of James); famously borne by Jimi Hendrix
The story
Jimi is James set loose: the old name traced through Hebrew Jacob and glossed as supplanter, softened to Jimmy on a million playgrounds, then respelled by one man. James Marshall Hendrix adopted the spelling Jimi in 1966, just as a move to London launched four astonishing years in which he rewrote what an electric guitar could do, from Purple Haze to the Star-Spangled Banner he bent into new shapes at Woodstock. He died in 1970 at twenty-seven, and those four letters still mean feedback, velvet, and fire to anyone who has heard him play. As a birth-certificate name, Jimi has always been an uncommon choice in American records, surfacing faintly in the rock era and flickering again in the most recent decade, which keeps it feeling less like a fashion and more like a deliberate tribute.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Jimi has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
189 people · the #26,468 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 32
Among people named Jimi living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Jimi
Most people given the name Jimi in the United States were born between 1970 and 2009. The Jimi you meet today is most often in his 30s or 40s.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Jimi deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Jimi truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Jimi fits with your family’s names and surname.
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