Humanverse

Jamal vs Jamell

American parents have registered 33,501 Jamals since 1880, against 2,240 Jamells. Jamal is still ahead, with 169 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jamal against Jamell, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jamal Jamell

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

Jamal has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1946 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1984, when Jamal had 527 and Jamell had 70.

Side by side

  Jamal Jamell
Total US births 33,5012,240
Most in one year 1,25374
Babies in 2025 16920
Estimated living today 32,0002,200
Median age today 3233
Peak year 19931989
Best rank 233rd boys1,258th boys
Rank in 2025 1,196th4,857th
First recorded 19461967
Girls / boys 266 / 33,23575 / 2,165

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 Jamal Jamell
France 3,4155
England and Wales 2,6016

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: Jamal and Jamell.