Islah vs Islam

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Islah Islam

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 49 years in which either name was published, Islam for 39 years and Islah for 10 years. The lead changed hands once.

• 1975–2015 Islam ahead
• 2016–2025 Islah ahead

Side by side

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 Islams alive today are over 23; half the Islahs are over 5. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Islah Florida (7.9×), Texas (6.4×), California (1.3×)
• Islam New York (10.1×)

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.

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

• Islah vs Isla
• Islah vs Isley
• Islah vs Island
• Islam vs Isla
• Islam vs Isley
• Islam vs Island