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Miral vs Miriam

American parents have registered 118,190 Miriams since 1880, against 504 Mirals. Miriam is still ahead, with 1,262 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Miral against Miriam, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Miral Miriam

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

Miriam has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Miral had 61 and Miriam had 1,262.

Side by side

  Miral Miriam
Total US births 504118,190
Most in one year 611,834
Babies in 2025 611,262
Estimated living today 50074,000
Median age today 533
Peak year 20251924
Best rank 2,778th girls143rd girls
Rank in 2025 2,778th246th
First recorded 19991880
Girls / boys 504 / 0117,910 / 280

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 Miriams alive today are over 33; half the Mirals are over 5. That is 28 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 Miral Miriam
Italy 65727,786
England and Wales 2414,299
France 1,0751,875
Ireland 122,463
Poland 41,093
Switzerland 39707
Belgium 100467
Scotland 9434

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: Miral and Miriam.