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Niam vs Niara

American parents have registered 1,798 Niams since 1880, against 1,196 Niaras. Niam is still ahead, with 125 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Niam against Niara, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Niam Niara

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 38 years in which either name was published, Niara for 25 years and Niam for 13 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Niam Niara
Total US births 1,7981,196
Most in one year 16950
Babies in 2025 12539
Estimated living today 1,8001,200
Median age today 616
Peak year 20212022
Best rank 1,168th boys3,220th girls
Rank in 2025 1,436th3,780th
First recorded 19931988
Girls / boys 0 / 1,7981,196 / 0

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 Niaras alive today are over 16; half the Niams are over 6. That is 10 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 Niam Niara
England and Wales 49883
Switzerland 3427

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: Niam and Niara.