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Mahalia vs Mahmoud

American parents have registered 2,739 Mahmouds since 1880, against 2,370 Mahalias. Mahmoud is still ahead, with 64 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mahalia against Mahmoud, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mahalia Mahmoud

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 123 years in which either name was published, Mahalia for 73 years and Mahmoud for 50 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Mahalia Mahmoud
Total US births 2,3702,739
Most in one year 6591
Babies in 2025 5364
Estimated living today 2,0002,700
Median age today 2221
Peak year 20202018
Best rank 2,597th girls1,717th boys
Rank in 2025 3,067th2,207th
First recorded 18801968
Girls / boys 2,370 / 00 / 2,739

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 Mahalia Mahmoud
France 3051,555
England and Wales 172481

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: Mahalia and Mahmoud.