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Saleena vs Salem

American parents have registered 11,178 Salems since 1880, against 776 Saleenas. Salem is still ahead, with 1,111 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Saleena against Salem, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Saleena Salem

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 75 years in which either name was published, Salem for 74 years and Saleena for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Saleena Salem
Total US births 77611,178
Most in one year 371,174
Babies in 2025 under 51,111
Estimated living today 76011,000
Median age today 264
Peak year 19962023
Best rank 3,149th girls417th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked435th
First recorded 19741912
Girls / boys 776 / 06,491 / 4,687

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 Saleenas alive today are over 26; half the Salems are over 4. That is 22 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 Saleena Salem
England and Wales 162314

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: Saleena and Salem.