Humanverse

Mehar vs Mehmet

American parents have registered 837 Mehmets since 1880, against 672 Mehars. But in 2025 it was Mehar that was commoner, 67 babies to 19.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mehar against Mehmet, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mehar Mehmet

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 45 years in which either name was published, Mehmet for 35 years and Mehar for 10 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mehar Mehmet
Total US births 672837
Most in one year 6742
Babies in 2025 6719
Estimated living today 670820
Median age today 614
Peak year 20252015
Best rank 2,751st girls2,809th boys
Rank in 2025 2,751st5,045th
First recorded 19981960
Girls / boys 626 / 460 / 837

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 Mehmets alive today are over 14; half the Mehars are over 6. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

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.

Country Mehar Mehmet
England and Wales 4341,130
Poland 224
Scotland 36

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

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Mehar and Mehmet.