Humanverse

Fatou vs Fatuma

American parents have registered 1,223 Fatous since 1880, against 598 Fatumas. Fatou is still ahead, with 56 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Fatou against Fatuma, 1880 to 2025 0 15 30 45 60 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Fatou Fatuma

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 35 years in which either name was published, Fatou for 34 years and Fatuma for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Fatou Fatuma
Total US births 1,223598
Most in one year 5636
Babies in 2025 5621
Estimated living today 1,200590
Median age today 1512
Peak year 20252013
Best rank 2,957th girls4,076th girls
Rank in 2025 2,957th5,722nd
First recorded 19911991
Girls / boys 1,223 / 0598 / 0

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.

Which name is older

Half of the Fatous alive today are over 15; half the Fatumas are over 12. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Fatou Fatuma
France 3,21540
England and Wales 26871

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

Related comparisons

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