Humanverse

Mehar vs Mehdi

American parents have registered 1,024 Mehdis since 1880, against 672 Mehars. But in 2025 it was Mehar that was commoner, 67 babies to 27.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mehar Mehdi

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 50 years in which either name was published, Mehdi for 39 years and Mehar for 11 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mehar Mehdi
Total US births 6721,024
Most in one year 6737
Babies in 2025 6727
Estimated living today 6701,000
Median age today 618
Peak year 20252012
Best rank 2,751st girls3,059th boys
Rank in 2025 2,751st3,949th
First recorded 19981976
Girls / boys 626 / 460 / 1,024

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 Mehdis alive today are over 18; half the Mehars are over 6. That is 12 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 Mehar Mehdi
England and Wales 434525

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: Mehar and Mehdi.