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Salma vs Salvatore

American parents have registered 57,445 Salvatores since 1880, against 10,316 Salmas. But in 2025 it was Salma that was commoner, 278 babies to 249.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Salma against Salvatore, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Salma Salvatore

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 136 years in which either name was published, Salvatore for 108 years and Salma for 28 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Salma Salvatore
Total US births 10,31657,445
Most in one year 4421,064
Babies in 2025 278249
Estimated living today 10,00029,000
Median age today 1650
Peak year 19991927
Best rank 569th girls149th boys
Rank in 2025 936th943rd
First recorded 19181888
Girls / boys 10,311 / 581 / 57,364

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 Salvatores alive today are over 50; half the Salmas are over 16. That is 34 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 Salma Salvatore
Italy 1,56449,409
France 10,3253,695
England and Wales 2,715230
Belgium 2,041543
Switzerland 355283
Poland 16325
Scotland 633

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: Salma and Salvatore.