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Samira vs Sammy

American parents have registered 45,140 Sammys since 1880, against 8,875 Samiras. But in 2025 it was Samira that was commoner, 387 babies to 110.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Samira against Sammy, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Samira Sammy

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 127 years in which either name was published, Sammy for 103 years and Samira for 24 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Samira Sammy
Total US births 8,87545,140
Most in one year 3871,239
Babies in 2025 387110
Estimated living today 8,80029,000
Median age today 1559
Peak year 20251947
Best rank 723rd girls175th boys
Rank in 2025 723rd1,852nd
First recorded 19611896
Girls / boys 8,875 / 01,758 / 43,382

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 Sammys alive today are over 59; half the Samiras are over 15. That is 44 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 Samira Sammy
France 13,4201,485
England and Wales 1,580977
Belgium 523296
Poland 2383
Ireland 5061
Scotland 1967

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: Samira and Sammy.