Humanverse

Zara vs Zaria

American parents have registered 20,930 Zaras since 1880, against 11,277 Zarias. Zara is still ahead, with 1,432 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Zara Zaria

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 115 years in which either name was published, Zara for 102 years and Zaria for 13 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Zara Zaria
Total US births 20,93011,277
Most in one year 1,441568
Babies in 2025 1,432274
Estimated living today 20,00011,000
Median age today 716
Peak year 20222000
Best rank 201st girls479th girls
Rank in 2025 212th943rd
First recorded 18961982
Girls / boys 20,930 / 011,277 / 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 Zarias alive today are over 16; half the Zaras are over 7. 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 Zara Zaria
England and Wales 20,002267
Ireland 2,6556
Scotland 2,6293
Northern Ireland 1,4563
France 1,17015
Poland 1572

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: Zara and Zaria.