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Zahir vs Zahra

American parents have registered 9,395 Zahras since 1880, against 4,784 Zahirs. Zahra is still ahead, with 562 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zahir against Zahra, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zahir Zahra

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

Zahra has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1973 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1973, when Zahir had 7 and Zahra had 8.

Side by side

  Zahir Zahra
Total US births 4,7849,395
Most in one year 356562
Babies in 2025 356562
Estimated living today 4,7009,300
Median age today 89
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 738th boys538th girls
Rank in 2025 738th538th
First recorded 19731973
Girls / boys 7 / 4,7779,395 / 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.

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 Zahir Zahra
England and Wales 3348,856
France 6904,730
Belgium 32709
Scotland 3369
Switzerland 21207
Poland 211

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: Zahir and Zahra.