Humanverse

Zainab vs Zaine

American parents have registered 7,326 Zainabs since 1880, against 2,016 Zaines. Zainab is still ahead, with 338 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Zainab Zaine

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

Zainab has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1957 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Zainab had 212 and Zaine had 96.

Side by side

  Zainab Zaine
Total US births 7,3262,016
Most in one year 338105
Babies in 2025 33851
Estimated living today 7,3002,000
Median age today 1212
Peak year 20252015
Best rank 807th girls1,546th boys
Rank in 2025 807th2,572nd
First recorded 19571988
Girls / boys 7,326 / 016 / 2,000

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 Zainab Zaine
England and Wales 9,792408
France 1,13510

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: Zainab and Zaine.