Salem
Salem is a girl's name that peaked in 2023, when it was the 417th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 435th. About 11,000 Salems are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 4.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Salem boys named Salem
Girls and boys called Salem
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Salem crossed from boys to girls in 1998, and has stayed there for 6 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 60% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 43 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 11,178
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 4
- Peak year
- 2023
- Best rank
- 417th
- Rank in 2025
- 435th
- First recorded
- 1912
- Girls / boys
- 6,491 / 4,687
How old the living Salems are
born that year still alive today
Of the 11,178 babies given the name since 1912, about 11,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 9,400 of them are children and 12 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2021 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 Hebrew
From Biblical Hebrew שָׁלֵם (Genesis 14:18).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Salems
- Salem Al-Dawsari (born 1991)Saudi footballer
- Salem Al-Hajri (born 1996)association football player
- Salem Ilese (born 1999)American singer-songwriter
- Salem Al Fakir (born 1981)Swedish singer-songwriter
- Salem Saleh (born 1993)Emirati chess player
- Salem bin Laden (1946–1988)Saudi Arabian businessman
People named Salem with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Salem is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Salem is most concentrated in North Carolina (3.4×), Nevada (3.2×), Tennessee (2.0×), Arizona (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2023
The most popular girls’ names the year Salem peaked:
Salem elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Salem | 1,970 | 457th |
| England and Wales boys | Salem | 269 | 1,243rd |
| England and Wales girls | Salem | 45 | 3,447th |
| Belgium boys | Salem | 12 | 1,110th |
| France girls | Salem | 5 | 7,559th |
| Scotland boys | Salem | 3 | 733rd |
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.
Salem: rank by region
In 2022, Salem was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Salem | 498 | 5 |
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.
Salem 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 | Salem | 23 | 67 |
| Finland girls | Salem | 5 | 22 |
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 Salem lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 474 men called Salem 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Salem | 67 | 0.115 | 816 |
| Lleida | Salem | 17 | 0.072 | 991 |
| Guadalajara | Salem | 7 | 0.048 | 1,065 |
| Araba/Álava | Salem | 8 | 0.048 | 1,218 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Salem | 25 | 0.047 | 1,690 |
| Gipuzkoa | Salem | 16 | 0.045 | 1,127 |
Listed in 24 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 28 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
Salem against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.