Selim
The boy's name Selim has been in the national records since 1971, with 1,023 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 2,604th. About 1,000 Selims are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 8.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Selim
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,023
- Estimated living today
- 1,000
- Median age today
- 8
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 1,871st
- Rank in 2025
- 2,604th
- First recorded
- 1971
How old the living Selims are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,023 babies given the name since 1971, about 1,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 860 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2017 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 Selims
- Selim I (1470–1520)9th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520
- Selim i (1447–1512)the eighth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
- Selim II (1524–1574)11th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
- Selim III (1761–1808)28th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
- Selim Amallah (born 1996)Moroccan association football player
- Selim I Giray (1631–1704)khan of the Crimean Khanate
- Selim Benachour (born 1981)Tunisian and French association football player
- Selim Palmgren (1878–1951)Finnish composer and pianist
People named Selim with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Selim is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Selim is most concentrated in Florida (4.7×), New Jersey (4.5×), New York (4.2×), California (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year Selim peaked:
Selim elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Selim +1 spelling | 6,650 | 318th |
| Belgium boys | Selim +1 spelling | 753 | 301st |
| Switzerland boys | Selim | 328 | 396th |
| England and Wales boys | Selim | 265 | 1,000th |
| Poland boys | Selim +1 spelling | 30 birth registrations | 511th |
| Ireland boys | Selim | 3 | 770th |
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.
Selim: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Selim | 248 | 0.020% | 337th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Selim | 77 | 0.018% | 264th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Selim | 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, Selim is most concentrated in Aargau, where 0.03% of children were given it – 42 of them.
Selim: rank by region
In 2025, Selim was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Selim | 498 | 11 |
| Wallonia | Selim | 394 | 6 |
| Brussels | Selim | 225 | 6 |
In 2025, Selim was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Selim | 243 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Selim appears in the lists for Province of Flemish Brabant (218th) and Brussels-Capital Region (225th).
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.
Selim by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 53 | 290th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Selim 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 | Selim | 120 | 327 |
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
Selim 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.