Humanverse

Jamal

Jamal is a boy's name that peaked in 1993, when it was the 233rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,196th. About 32,000 Jamals are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 32.

Popularity, 1880–2025

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

girls named Jamal boys named Jamal

By the numbers

Total US births
33,501
Estimated living today
32,000
Median age today
32
Peak year
1993
Best rank
233rd
Rank in 2025
1,196th
First recorded
1946
Girls / boys
266 / 33,235

How old the living Jamals are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 33,501 babies given the name since 1946, about 32,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 5,400 of them are children and 90 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Arabic

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Jamals

People named Jamal with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Jamal is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Jamal is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (5.6×), Maryland (3.2×), Louisiana (2.5×), Georgia (2.2×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1993

The most popular boys’ names the year Jamal peaked:

All the names of 1993

Jamal elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
France boys Jamal +1 spelling 3,415 242nd
England and Wales boys Jamal 2,601 220th
Norway boys Jamal 352 337th
Italy boys Jamal 343
Switzerland boys Jamal 181 466th
Belgium boys Jamal 133 698th
Ireland boys Jamal 65 337th
Scotland boys Jamal 50 352nd
Poland boys Jamal 21 birth registrations 442nd

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Jamal: births by region

RegionCountry Spelling BirthsShare of the region Best rank
German boys Switzerland Jamal 156 0.013% 337th
French boys Switzerland Jamal 19 0.004% 466th
Italian boys Switzerland Jamal 6 0.009% 180th

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Jamal is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.02% of children were given it – 51 of them.

Jamal: rank by region

In 2020, Jamal was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Region Spelling Place Children
Brussels Jamal 311 5

In 2020, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jamal appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (311th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Jamal by city

CityYears BirthsBest rank
Berlin boys 2017–2023 97 178th

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Jamal among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland boys Jamal 120 234
Finland girls Jamal 68

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Jamal lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 5,504 men called Jamal were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Province Spelling People Per thousand Place there
Melilla Jamal 98 2.239 89
Almería Jamal 303 0.770 165
Ceuta Jamal 32 0.759 209
Tarragona Jamal 302 0.689 192
Girona Jamal 272 0.653 191
Murcia Jamal 444 0.559 196

Listed in 51 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 1 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

Jamal against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Jamal with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.