Jafar
Jafar reached its high-water mark in 1994 at number 2,347, and has been recorded 671 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 6,803rd. About 660 Jafars are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 19.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Jafar
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 671
- Estimated living today
- 660
- Median age today
- 19
- Peak year
- 1994
- Best rank
- 2,347th
- Rank in 2025
- 6,803rd
- First recorded
- 1975
How old the living Jafars are
born that year still alive today
Of the 671 babies given the name since 1975, about 660 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2006 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, Persian, from Arabic
Borrowed from Arabic جَعْفَر. A transliteration of an Arabic and Persian male given name.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jafars
- Jafar Panahi (born 1960)Iranian film director
- Ja'far ibn Abī Tālib (589–629)Companion (Sahabi) and cousin of Muhammad (c. 590–629)
- Jafar Sharif-Emami (1910–1998)Persian engineer and politician
- Ja'far ibn Yahya (760–803)8th century Vizier of Harun al-Rashid's Court
- Jafar Jabbarly (1899–1934)Azerbaijani playwright, poet, director and screenwriter
- Jafar Khan (1800–1789)The fifth Khan of Zand dynasty
- Ja'far Pishevari (1892–1947)Chairman of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party and the National Government of Azerbaijan.
- Jafar Salmasi (1918–2000)Iranian weightlifter
People named Jafar with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jafar is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1994
The most popular boys’ names the year Jafar peaked:
Jafar elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Jafar | 109 | 2,175th |
| France boys | Jafar | 105 | 2,292nd |
| Ireland boys | Jafar | 3 | 730th |
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.
Jafar by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 593rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Jafar 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 boys | Jafar | 31 | 39 |
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
Jafar 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.