Yael

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Yael boys named Yael

Girls and boys called Yael

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Yael crossed from girls to boys in 2003, and has stayed there for 23 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 71% boys, which is roughly where it still is.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 57 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

9,708

Estimated living today

9,600

Median age today

13

Peak year

2023

Best rank

775th

Rank in 2025

817th

First recorded

1954

Girls / boys

4,501 / 5,207

How old the living Yaels are

born that year still alive today

Of the 9,708 babies given the name since 1954, about 9,600 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 6,300 of them are children and 20 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 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

Rendering of the modern Israeli.

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

Notable Yaels

• Yaël Braun-Pivet (born 1970)French politician
• Yael Naim (born 1978)Israeli singer
• Yael Stone (born 1985)Australian actress
• Yael Grobglas (born 1984)French-Israeli actress
• Yael Dayan (1939–2024)Israeli politician
• Yaël Abecassis (born 1967)Israeli actress and model
• Yael Arad (born 1967)Israeli judoka
• Yael Falcón (born 1988)Argentine association football referee

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

Where Yael is most common

• CA1,769
• NY1,735
• TX948
• FL462
• NJ390
• IL348
• AZ237
• GA185
• NC154
• MD146

Relative to how many babies each state records, Yael is most concentrated in New York (3.2×), Arizona (2.7×), California (2.5×), New Jersey (2.0×).

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

Names of 2023

The most popular boys’ names the year Yael peaked:

• Liam
• Noah
• Oliver
• James
• Elijah
• Mateo

All the names of 2023

Yael elsewhere

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.

Yael: births by region

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, Yael is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.15% of children were given it – 304 of them.

Yael: rank by region

In 2025, Yael was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2018, Yael was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2023, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Yael appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (238th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – 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.

Yael by city

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

Yael 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.

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 Yael lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,398 men called Yael and 439 women called Yael 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

Listed in 45 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 7 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.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 25 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 27 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.