Sami

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Sami boys named Sami

Girls and boys called Sami

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Sami crossed from girls to boys in 1975, and has stayed there for 51 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 92% boys, which is roughly where it still is.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 61 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

6,727

Estimated living today

6,500

Median age today

19

Peak year

2025

Best rank

1,112th

Rank in 2025

1,112th

First recorded

1945

Girls / boys

1,424 / 5,303

How old the living Samis are

born that year still alive today

Of the 6,727 babies given the name since 1945, about 6,500 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 3,000 of them are children and 70 are 65 or over. 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

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Samis

• Sami Khedira (born 1987)German association football player
• Sami Hyypiä (born 1973)Finnish footballer and manager
• Sami Yusuf (born 1980)British musician
• Sami Frashëri (1850–1904)Albanian writer, philosopher, playwright and activist
• Sami Al-Jaber (born 1972)former Saudi Arabian footballer and manager
• Sami Zayn (born 1984)Canadian professional wrestler
• Sami Allagui (born 1986)Tunisian association football player
• Ali Sami Yen (1886–1951)Turkish association football player and manager

People named Sami with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Sami is most common

• CA744
• NY542
• TX385
• IL302
• NJ260
• FL231
• VA228
• MI225
• MA152
• OH138

Relative to how many babies each state records, Sami is most concentrated in Virginia (2.9×), New Jersey (2.7×), California (2.1×), New York (2.0×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2025

The most popular boys’ names the year Sami peaked:

• Liam
• Noah
• Oliver
• Theodore
• Henry
• James

All the names of 2025

Sami elsewhere

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.

Sami: births by region

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, Sami is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.08% of children were given it – 84 of them.

Sami: rank by region

In 2025, Sami was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2020, Sami was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Sami was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Sami appears in the lists for Province of Liège (147th), Brussels-Capital Region (153rd), Province of Flemish Brabant (155th), Province of Antwerp (181st) and Province of East Flanders (264th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, 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.

Sami by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Sami 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.

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.

Where Sami lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,515 men called Sami 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

Listed in 48 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 4 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

• Samuel
• Samantha
• Sam
• Sammy
• Sammie
• Samara
• Samson
• Samir
• Samira
• Samual
• Samiyah
• Samaria

Sami against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Sami vs Samuel
• Sami vs Samantha
• Sami vs Sam
• Sami vs Sammy
• Sami vs Sammie
• Sami vs Samara

Compare Sami with a name of your own