Aliyah
Aliyah is a girl's name that peaked in 2011, when it was the 133rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 263rd. About 49,000 Aliyahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Aliyah boys named Aliyah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 49,054
- Estimated living today
- 49,000
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 2011
- Best rank
- 133rd
- Rank in 2025
- 263rd
- First recorded
- 1971
- Girls / boys
- 49,011 / 43
How old the living Aliyahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 49,054 babies given the name since 1971, about 49,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 32,000 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Arabic
Ultimately from Arabic عَالِيَة.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Aliyahs
- Aliyah (born 1994)Canadian professional wrestler
- Aliyah Boston (born 2001)American basketball player
- Aliyah Khalaf Saleh (born 1956)Iraqi humanitarian
People named Aliyah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Aliyah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Aliyah is most concentrated in Nevada (3.0×), Florida (2.0×), Arizona (2.0×), New Mexico (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2011
The most popular girls’ names the year Aliyah peaked:
Aliyah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Aliyah +1 spelling | 7,055 | 98th |
| England and Wales girls | Aliyah | 4,930 | 174th |
| Belgium girls | Aliyah | 583 | 180th |
| Switzerland girls | Aliyah | 530 | 200th |
| Scotland girls | Aliyah | 219 | 262nd |
| Ireland girls | Aliyah | 188 | 221st |
| Northern Ireland girls | Aliyah | 54 | 246th |
| Poland girls | Aliyah | 22 birth registrations | 460th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Aliyah: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Aliyah | 394 | 0.032% | 211th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Aliyah | 133 | 0.031% | 152nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Aliyah | 3 | 0.005% | 194th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Aliyah is most concentrated in Thurgau, where 0.05% of children were given it – 29 of them.
Aliyah: rank by region
In 2025, Aliyah was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Aliyah | 213 | 26 |
| Wallonia | Aliyah | 162 | 16 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Aliyah appears in the lists for Province of Liège (113th), Province of Antwerp (136th) and Province of East Flanders (250th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Aliyah by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 90 | 152nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Aliyah among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Aliyah | 25 | 35 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Aliyah against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.