Humanverse

Dhara vs Dharma

American parents have registered 640 Dharmas since 1880, against 637 Dharas. But in 2025 it was Dhara that was commoner, 49 babies to fewer than five.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dhara against Dharma, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dhara Dharma

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 44 years in which either name was published, Dhara for 24 years and Dharma for 20 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Dhara Dharma
Total US births 637640
Most in one year 4968
Babies in 2025 49under 5
Estimated living today 630630
Median age today 2021
Peak year 20251998
Best rank 3,211th girls2,124th girls
Rank in 2025 3,211thunranked
First recorded 19851969
Girls / boys 637 / 0618 / 22

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Dhara Dharma
England and Wales 11481

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Dhara and Dharma.