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Safari vs Safiyah

American parents have registered 799 Safiyahs since 1880, against 507 Safaris. Safiyah is still ahead, with 30 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Safari against Safiyah, 1880 to 2025 0 13 25 38 50 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Safari Safiyah

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 39 years in which either name was published, Safiyah for 29 years and Safari for 10 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Safari Safiyah
Total US births 507799
Most in one year 4347
Babies in 2025 2130
Estimated living today 500790
Median age today 811
Peak year 20222023
Best rank 4,907th girls3,386th girls
Rank in 2025 8,362nd4,546th
First recorded 19921985
Girls / boys 369 / 138799 / 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 Safiyahs alive today are over 11; half the Safaris are over 8. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Safari Safiyah
England and Wales 7958

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: Safari and Safiyah.