Humanverse

Sahara vs Sahib

American parents have registered 4,734 Saharas since 1880, against 859 Sahibs. Sahara is still ahead, with 98 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sahara against Sahib, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sahara Sahib

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

Sahara has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1964 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Sahara had 98 and Sahib had 50.

Side by side

  Sahara Sahib
Total US births 4,734859
Most in one year 24850
Babies in 2025 9850
Estimated living today 4,700850
Median age today 1710
Peak year 20062017
Best rank 1,033rd girls2,840th boys
Rank in 2025 1,962nd2,941st
First recorded 19641985
Girls / boys 4,729 / 561 / 798

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 Saharas alive today are over 17; half the Sahibs are over 10. That is 7 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 Sahara Sahib
England and Wales 6441,018
France 6510
Scotland 33

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: Sahara and Sahib.