Humanverse

Sarah vs Sarrah

American parents have registered 1,101,838 Sarahs since 1880, against 1,636 Sarrahs. Sarah is still ahead, with 2,710 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sarah Sarrah

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

Sarah 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 1888, when Sarah had 1,755 and Sarrah had 12.

Side by side

  Sarah Sarrah
Total US births 1,101,8381,636
Most in one year 28,60845
Babies in 2025 2,7105
Estimated living today 889,0001,200
Median age today 3733
Peak year 19821977
Best rank 4th girls2,091st girls
Rank in 2025 90th14,942nd
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 1,098,498 / 3,3401,636 / 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 Sarahs alive today are over 37; half the Sarrahs are over 33. 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 Sarah Sarrah
France 174,705360
England and Wales 28,32631

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: Sarah and Sarrah.