Naeemah vs Nael

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Naeemah Nael

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 55 years in which either name was published, Naeemah for 34 years and Nael for 21 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

• 1971–1998 Naeemah ahead
• 1999–2000 Nael ahead
• 2001–2002 Naeemah ahead
• 2003–2005 Nael ahead
• 2006–2007 Naeemah ahead
• 2008 Nael ahead
• 2009 Naeemah ahead
• 2010 Nael ahead
• 2011 Naeemah ahead
• 2012–2025 Nael 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 Naeemahs alive today are over 30; half the Naels are over 3. That is 27 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Naeemah New York (7.1×)
• Nael Texas (3.2×), Arizona (3.0×), Florida (2.9×)

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

• Naeemah vs Naeem
• Nael vs Naeem