Humanverse

Samantha vs Samaria

American parents have registered 594,052 Samanthas since 1880, against 4,511 Samarias. Samantha is still ahead, with 1,973 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Samantha against Samaria, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Samantha Samaria

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

Samantha has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1952, when Samantha had 38 and Samaria had 6.

Side by side

  Samantha Samaria
Total US births 594,0524,511
Most in one year 25,926241
Babies in 2025 1,973104
Estimated living today 580,0004,500
Median age today 3019
Peak year 19902007
Best rank 5th girls1,084th girls
Rank in 2025 151st1,880th
First recorded 18801952
Girls / boys 592,847 / 1,2054,511 / 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 Samanthas alive today are over 30; half the Samarias are over 19. That is 11 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 Samantha Samaria
France 17,75010
England and Wales 12,74433

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: Samantha and Samaria.