Humanverse

Mahad vs Mahala

American parents have registered 2,889 Mahalas since 1880, against 790 Mahads. Mahala is still ahead, with 15 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mahad Mahala

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 141 years in which either name was published, Mahala for 136 years and Mahad for 5 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Mahad Mahala
Total US births 7902,889
Most in one year 4274
Babies in 2025 1415
Estimated living today 7801,800
Median age today 1423
Peak year 20172006
Best rank 2,840th boys2,485th girls
Rank in 2025 6,143rd7,133rd
First recorded 19901880
Girls / boys 0 / 7902,889 / 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 Mahalas alive today are over 23; half the Mahads are over 14. That is 9 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 Mahad Mahala
England and Wales 53133

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: Mahad and Mahala.