Humanverse

Samad vs Samantha

American parents have registered 594,052 Samanthas since 1880, against 833 Samads. Samantha is still ahead, with 1,973 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Samad against Samantha, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Samad Samantha

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

Samantha has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Samad had 16 and Samantha had 1,973.

Side by side

  Samad Samantha
Total US births 833594,052
Most in one year 2925,926
Babies in 2025 161,973
Estimated living today 810580,000
Median age today 2230
Peak year 20021990
Best rank 3,095th boys5th girls
Rank in 2025 5,608th151st
First recorded 19721880
Girls / boys 0 / 833592,847 / 1,205

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 Samanthas alive today are over 30; half the Samads are over 22. That is 8 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 Samad Samantha
France 14517,750
England and Wales 23012,744

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: Samad and Samantha.