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Zahid vs Zahir

American parents have registered 4,784 Zahirs since 1880, against 1,126 Zahids. Zahir is still ahead, with 356 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zahid against Zahir, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zahid Zahir

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 48 years in which either name was published, Zahir for 45 years and Zahid for 3 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Zahid Zahir
Total US births 1,1264,784
Most in one year 64356
Babies in 2025 38356
Estimated living today 1,1004,700
Median age today 138
Peak year 20222025
Best rank 2,243rd boys738th boys
Rank in 2025 3,128th738th
First recorded 19781973
Girls / boys 0 / 1,1267 / 4,777

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 Zahids alive today are over 13; half the Zahirs are over 8. That is 5 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 Zahid Zahir
France 160690
England and Wales 393334
Belgium 532
Scotland 223

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: Zahid and Zahir.