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Zahir vs Zahraa

American parents have registered 4,784 Zahirs since 1880, against 1,090 Zahraas. Zahir is still ahead, with 356 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Zahir Zahraa

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

Zahir 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 1993, when Zahir had 12 and Zahraa had 12.

Side by side

  Zahir Zahraa
Total US births 4,7841,090
Most in one year 35662
Babies in 2025 35635
Estimated living today 4,7001,100
Median age today 813
Peak year 20252015
Best rank 738th boys2,810th girls
Rank in 2025 738th4,067th
First recorded 19731989
Girls / boys 7 / 4,7771,090 / 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 Zahraas 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 Zahir Zahraa
England and Wales 334962
France 69065
Switzerland 2138
Belgium 325
Scotland 315

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 Zahraa.