Humanverse

Samara vs Samya

American parents have registered 22,769 Samaras since 1880, against 2,854 Samyas. Samara is still ahead, with 957 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Samara against Samya, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Samara Samya

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

Samara has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1949 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Samara had 242 and Samya had 123.

Side by side

  Samara Samya
Total US births 22,7692,854
Most in one year 1,270232
Babies in 2025 95726
Estimated living today 22,0002,800
Median age today 1317
Peak year 20182007
Best rank 256th girls1,115th girls
Rank in 2025 320th4,987th
First recorded 19491981
Girls / boys 22,764 / 52,854 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Samyas alive today are over 17; half the Samaras are over 13. That is 4 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 Samara Samya
France 6101,015
England and Wales 1,16190
Belgium 1054
Poland 72

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: Samara and Samya.