Sam
The boy's name Sam has been in the national records since 1880, with 128,810 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 647th. About 48,000 Sams are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 50.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Sam boys named Sam
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 128,810
- Estimated living today
- 48,000
- Median age today
- 50
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 75th
- Rank in 2025
- 647th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,576 / 127,234
How old the living Sams are
born that year still alive today
Of the 128,810 babies given the name since 1880, about 48,000 are alive — 38 in every hundred. Roughly 8,900 of them are children and 15,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1975 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.
Notable Sams
- Sam Harris (born 1967)American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
- Sam Neill (1947–2026)New Zealand actor
- Sam Altman (born 1985)American venture capitalist
- Sam Smith (born 1992)British singer-songwriter
- Sam Rockwell (born 1968)American actor
- Sam Raimi (born 1959)American filmmaker
- Sam Mendes (born 1965)British stage and film director
- Sam Houston (1793–1863)American statesman, politician, and soldier
People named Sam with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Sam is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Sam is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.5×), South Carolina (2.5×), Alabama (2.3×), Louisiana (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular boys’ names the year Sam peaked:
Sam elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Sam | 21,004 | 47th |
| France boys | Sam | 6,850 | 242nd |
| Belgium boys | Sam | 5,445 | 28th |
| Sweden boys | Sam | 4,302 | 20th |
| Scotland boys | Sam | 4,164 | 33rd |
| Ireland boys | Sam | 4,155 | 41st |
| New Zealand boys | Sam | 2,347 | 55th |
| Belgium girls | Sam | 1,940 | 95th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Sam | 1,104 | 45th |
| Switzerland boys | Sam | 855 | 155th |
| France girls | Sam | 760 | 1,035th |
| Norway boys | Sam | 635 | 168th |
| England and Wales girls | Sam | 109 | 1,796th |
| Scotland girls | Sam | 38 | 456th |
| Poland boys | Sam | 23 birth registrations | 452nd |
| Ireland girls | Sam | 3 | 868th |
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.
Sam: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Sam | 500 | 0.040% | 149th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Sam | 342 | 0.079% | 102nd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Sam | 13 | 0.020% | 117th |
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, Sam is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.09% of children were given it – 157 of them.
Sam: rank by region
In 2025, Sam was given 5 times or more in 5 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Sam | 141 | 42 |
| Flanders | Sam | 303 | 18 |
| Wallonia | Sam | 110 | 27 |
| Wallonia | Sam | 452 | 5 |
| Brussels | Sam | 130 | 9 |
In 2024, Sam was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Sam | 241 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Sam appears in the lists for Province of Namur (66th), Province of Hainaut (98th), Province of Antwerp (99th), Province of Liège (117th), Brussels-Capital Region (130th), Province of Limburg (132nd), Province of West Flanders (162nd), Province of East Flanders (170th), Province of Flemish Brabant (177th) and Province of Antwerp (204th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Sam by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 159 | 137th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Sam 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Sam | 11,348 | 12,163 |
| the Netherlands girls | Sam | 3,272 | 3,592 |
| Finland boys | Sam | 622 | 718 |
| Finland girls | Sam | 30 | 41 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Sam lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 687 men called Sam were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Sam | 54 | 0.087 | 789 |
| Girona | Sam | 33 | 0.079 | 884 |
| Barcelona | Sam | 211 | 0.072 | 867 |
| Lleida | Sam | 17 | 0.072 | 991 |
| Málaga | Sam | 50 | 0.057 | 973 |
| Tarragona | Sam | 20 | 0.046 | 1,307 |
Listed in 20 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 32 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Sam 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.