Ima vs Imari

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Ima Imari

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 136 years in which either name was published, Ima for 88 years and Imari for 48 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1886–1969 Ima ahead
• 1971–1972 Imari ahead
• 1973 Ima ahead
• 1974–1975 Imari ahead
• 1976 Ima ahead
• 1977–1978 Imari ahead
• 1980–1982 Ima ahead
• 1983–2025 Imari ahead

Side by side

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 Imas alive today are over 81; half the Imaris are over 22. That is 59 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Ima Oklahoma (10.4×), Arkansas (8.1×), Kentucky (5.3×)
• Imari Florida (3.7×), Louisiana (3.2×), Georgia (3.1×)

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.

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

• Ima vs Imani
• Ima vs Iman
• Ima vs Imanol
• Ima vs Imaan
• Ima vs Imara
• Imari vs Imani
• Imari vs Iman
• Imari vs Imanol