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Safiyyah vs Safwan

American parents have registered 965 Safwans since 1880, against 768 Safiyyahs. Safwan is still ahead, with 72 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Safiyyah Safwan

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 50 years in which either name was published, Safiyyah for 26 years and Safwan for 24 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Safiyyah Safwan
Total US births 768965
Most in one year 3672
Babies in 2025 3672
Estimated living today 760960
Median age today 178
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 3,975th girls2,056th boys
Rank in 2025 3,975th2,056th
First recorded 19761983
Girls / boys 768 / 00 / 965

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 Safiyyahs alive today are over 17; half the Safwans are over 8. That is 9 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 Safiyyah Safwan
England and Wales 1,751967
France 801,530
Belgium 10520
Scotland 103

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: Safiyyah and Safwan.