Humanverse

Zara vs Zari

American parents have registered 20,930 Zaras since 1880, against 1,509 Zaris. Zara is still ahead, with 1,432 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zara against Zari, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zara Zari

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

Zara has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1896 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1993, when Zara had 52 and Zari had 23.

Side by side

  Zara Zari
Total US births 20,9301,509
Most in one year 1,441119
Babies in 2025 1,43267
Estimated living today 20,0001,500
Median age today 79
Peak year 20222022
Best rank 201st girls1,742nd girls
Rank in 2025 212th2,583rd
First recorded 18961990
Girls / boys 20,930 / 01,489 / 20

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 Zaris alive today are over 9; half the Zaras are over 7. That is 2 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 Zara Zari
England and Wales 20,00274

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: Zara and Zari.