Yahya
Yahya is a boy's name that peaked in 2025, when it was the 615th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 615th. About 4,500 Yahyas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 8.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Yahya boys named Yahya
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,582
- Estimated living today
- 4,500
- Median age today
- 8
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 615th
- Rank in 2025
- 615th
- First recorded
- 1972
- Girls / boys
- 6 / 4,576
How old the living Yahyas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,582 babies given the name since 1972, about 4,500 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 3,800 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin Arabic
From Arabic يَحْيَى, equivalent to John in the Qur'an.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Yahyas
- Yahya Sinwar (1962–2024)Palestinian politician and Hamas leader
- Yahya Jammeh (born 1965)2nd President of the Gambia
- Yahya Khan (1917–1980)former Pakistani president
- Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (born 1986)American actor
- Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din (1869–1948)Imam
- Yahya Al-Shehri (born 1990)Saudi Arabian footballer
- Yahya Golmohammadi (born 1971)Iranian association football player and manager
- Yahya of Antioch (980–1066)Melkite Christian physician
People named Yahya with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Yahya is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Yahya is most concentrated in Minnesota (5.5×), Virginia (2.3×), Washington (2.2×), 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 Yahya peaked:
Yahya elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Yahya | 6,383 | 81st |
| France boys | Yahya +1 spelling | 3,000 | 229th |
| Italy boys | Yahya | 1,922 | — |
| Belgium boys | Yahya | 704 | 110th |
| Norway boys | Yahya | 198 | 210th |
| Scotland boys | Yahya | 141 | 163rd |
| Switzerland boys | Yahya | 100 | 486th |
| Ireland boys | Yahya | 77 | 396th |
| Poland boys | Yahya | 12 birth registrations | 445th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Yahya | 4 | 339th |
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.
Yahya: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Yahya | 62 | 0.005% | 530th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Yahya | 36 | 0.008% | 308th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Yahya | 2 | 0.003% | 180th |
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.
Yahya: rank by region
In 2025, Yahya was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Yahya | 105 | 54 |
| Wallonia | Yahya | 235 | 12 |
| Brussels | Yahya | 40 | 20 |
In 2021, Yahya was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Yahya | 10 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Yahya appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (40th), Province of Antwerp (42nd), Province of Liège (133rd) and Province of East Flanders (153rd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – 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.
Yahya by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 63 | 204th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Yahya 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 | Yahya | 151 | 207 |
| Finland girls | Yahya | — | 27 |
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 Yahya lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 4,754 men called Yahya 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Murcia | Yahya | 669 | 0.842 | 143 |
| Melilla | Yahya | 32 | 0.731 | 224 |
| Almería | Yahya | 286 | 0.727 | 174 |
| Ceuta | Yahya | 23 | 0.546 | 256 |
| Girona | Yahya | 177 | 0.425 | 261 |
| Tarragona | Yahya | 186 | 0.424 | 272 |
Listed in 51 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 1 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
Yahya 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.