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Safiya vs Safiyah

American parents have registered 2,831 Safiyas since 1880, against 799 Safiyahs. Safiya is still ahead, with 168 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Safiya against Safiyah, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Safiya Safiyah

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

Safiya has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1973 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Safiya had 35 and Safiyah had 24.

Side by side

  Safiya Safiyah
Total US births 2,831799
Most in one year 16847
Babies in 2025 16830
Estimated living today 2,800790
Median age today 1211
Peak year 20252023
Best rank 1,326th girls3,386th girls
Rank in 2025 1,326th4,546th
First recorded 19731985
Girls / boys 2,831 / 0799 / 0

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 Safiya Safiyah
France 4,840220
England and Wales 1,984958
Belgium 84725

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: Safiya and Safiyah.