Humanverse

Muhammad vs Muhammadali

American parents have registered 21,962 Muhammads since 1880, against 739 Muhammadalis. Muhammad is still ahead, with 1,473 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Muhammad Muhammadali

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

Muhammad has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1929 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Muhammad had 1,241 and Muhammadali had 108.

Side by side

  Muhammad Muhammadali
Total US births 21,962739
Most in one year 1,473120
Babies in 2025 1,47389
Estimated living today 22,000740
Median age today 93
Peak year 20252024
Best rank 239th boys1,494th boys
Rank in 2025 239th1,793rd
First recorded 19292006
Girls / boys 0 / 21,9620 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Muhammads alive today are over 9; half the Muhammadalis are over 3. That is 6 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 Muhammad Muhammadali
England and Wales 78,18021
Ireland 1,4916 Muhammad Ali
Italy 953190 Muhammad Ali
Poland 1446 Muhammad Ali

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: Muhammad and Muhammadali.