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Zarah vs Zarina

American parents have registered 2,957 Zarahs since 1880, against 1,612 Zarinas. Zarah is still ahead, with 151 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zarah against Zarina, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zarah Zarina

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 57 years in which either name was published, Zarah for 42 years and Zarina for 15 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Zarah Zarina
Total US births 2,9571,612
Most in one year 19995
Babies in 2025 15179
Estimated living today 2,9001,600
Median age today 911
Peak year 20222015
Best rank 1,216th girls2,060th girls
Rank in 2025 1,427th2,298th
First recorded 19681966
Girls / boys 2,957 / 01,612 / 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 Zarinas alive today are over 11; half the Zarahs are over 9. 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 Zarah Zarina
England and Wales 1,209278
France 27095

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: Zarah and Zarina.