Humanverse

Sara vs Sarayu

American parents have registered 437,441 Saras since 1880, against 679 Sarayus. Sara is still ahead, with 1,568 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sara against Sarayu, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sara Sarayu

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

Sara 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 2018, when Sara had 1,718 and Sarayu had 37.

Side by side

  Sara Sarayu
Total US births 437,441679
Most in one year 11,39141
Babies in 2025 1,56821
Estimated living today 354,000670
Median age today 3911
Peak year 19812009
Best rank 26th girls3,800th girls
Rank in 2025 198th5,722nd
First recorded 18802000
Girls / boys 436,193 / 1,248679 / 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 Saras alive today are over 39; half the Sarayus are over 11. That is 28 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 Sara Sarayu
England and Wales 14,63226

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: Sara and Sarayu.