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Nafis vs Naftali

American parents have registered 2,024 Naftalis since 1880, against 544 Nafises. Naftali is still ahead, with 58 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nafis Naftali

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 65 years in which either name was published, Naftali for 64 years and Nafis for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nafis Naftali
Total US births 5442,024
Most in one year 2883
Babies in 2025 658
Estimated living today 5302,000
Median age today 2716
Peak year 19922018
Best rank 2,532nd boys1,823rd boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th2,363rd
First recorded 19761951
Girls / boys 0 / 5440 / 2,024

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 Nafises alive today are over 27; half the Naftalis are over 16. That is 11 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 Nafis Naftali
England and Wales 2890
France 855

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: Nafis and Naftali.