Sarah
Sarah reached its high-water mark in 1982 at number 4, and has been recorded 1,101,838 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 90th. About 889,000 Sarahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Sarah boys named Sarah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,101,838
- Estimated living today
- 889,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1982
- Best rank
- 4th
- Rank in 2025
- 90th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,098,498 / 3,340
How old the living Sarahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,101,838 babies given the name since 1880, about 889,000 are alive — 81 in every hundred. Roughly 80,000 of them are children and 69,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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 שָׂרָה (“lady, princess”), from the Biblical figure originally named Sarai (שָׂרָי).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Sarahs
- Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923)French stage actress, painter and sculptor
- Sarah Palin (born 1964)Governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009
- Sarah Jessica Parker (born 1965)American actress
- Sarah Michelle Gellar (born 1977)American actress
- Sarah Wayne Callies (born 1977)American actress and director
- Sarah Ferguson (born 1959)British writer, charity patron, public speaker, film producer and television personality, and former Duchess of York
- Sarah Paulson (born 1974)American actress
- Sarah Brightman (born 1960)British singer and actress
People named Sarah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Sarah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Sarah is most concentrated in Alaska (1.8×), New Hampshire (1.7×), Vermont (1.6×), South Carolina (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1982
The most popular girls’ names the year Sarah peaked:
Sarah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Sarah | 174,675 | 8th |
| Ireland girls | Sarah | 30,971 | 1st |
| England and Wales girls | Sarah | 28,326 | 18th |
| Austria girls | Sarah | 23,909 | 4th |
| New Zealand girls | Sarah | 19,984 | 1st |
| Scotland girls | Sarah | 17,895 | 3rd |
| Belgium girls | Sarah | 12,527 | 2nd |
| Denmark girls | Sarah | 7,930 | 3rd |
| Italy girls | Sarah | 7,106 | — |
| Switzerland girls | Sarah | 5,239 | 2nd |
| Norway girls | Sarah | 4,511 | 35th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Sarah | 3,530 | 7th |
| Poland girls | Sarah | 1,037 birth registrations | 148th |
| France boys | Sarah | 30 | 4,672nd |
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.
Sarah: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Sarah | 3,708 | 0.298% | 3rd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Sarah | 1,452 | 0.334% | 2nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Sarah | 73 | 0.112% | 56th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Sarah | 6 | 0.161% | 2nd |
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, Sarah is most concentrated in Nidwalden, where 0.44% of children were given it – 39 of them.
Sarah: rank by region
In 2025, Sarah was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium. It has come first somewhere in 9 different years.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Sarah | 87 | 61 |
| Wallonia | Sarah | 141 | 18 |
| Brussels | Sarah | 41 | 18 |
In 2024, Sarah was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Sarah | 7 | 2 |
In 2025, Sarah was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Sarah | 276 | 3 |
| Wielkopolskie | Sarah | 248 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Sarah appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (41st), Province of Antwerp (42nd), Province of East Flanders (86th), Province of Liège (98th), Province of Flemish Brabant (108th) and Province of West Flanders (120th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.
Sarah by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 341 | 51st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Sarah 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Sarah | 11,399 | 14,580 |
| Finland girls | Sarah | 1,013 | 1,253 |
| the Netherlands boys | Sarah | — | 18 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Sarah lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 4,906 women called Sarah were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ceuta | Sarah | 20 | 0.483 | 344 |
| Melilla | Sarah | 20 | 0.462 | 375 |
| Balears, Illes | Sarah | 231 | 0.368 | 285 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Sarah | 371 | 0.361 | 314 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Sarah | 188 | 0.339 | 347 |
| Málaga | Sarah | 293 | 0.320 | 310 |
Listed in 50 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 2 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
Sarah 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.