One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Girls' name · 443,535 recorded births

Sara

#198 in the US in 2025

Where Sara stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#198girls’ names · US 2025

Sara was the 198th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 1,568 births.

peak 1981 · 11,359188019532025

Its moment was 1981, when 11,359 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#198US rank, 2025 (girls)
1,568US births in 2025
#26its best US rank, in 1981
1981peak year — 11,359 births
436,193US births since 1880
2,633NZ births since 1955
3,461E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Sara's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Sara was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Sara in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0340681
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sara in the United States, 1880–2025
girlsboys

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Sara in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Sara has been registered 2,633 times since 1955, peaking in 1986 with 105 births. It ranked #265 for girls in 2025 on 15 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0277554
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sara in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Sara in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Sara was registered 3,461 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2019 with 609 births. It ranked #110 for girls in 2025 on 427 births.

20200.0109217
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sara in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#110165
1890#137262
1900#157375
1910#128633
1920#1112,364
1930#1341,770
1940#1212,087
1950#1472,059
1960#1862,037
1970#1263,060
1980#2711,148
1990#348,979
2000#575,325
2010#1192,636
2020#1821,577

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Sara most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California39,546
New York30,056
Texas27,819
Pennsylvania25,476
Ohio19,888
Illinois18,762
Georgia17,023
Michigan16,420
Florida14,762
New Jersey12,011

Questions about Sara

How popular is the name Sara?

Sara ranked #198 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 1,568 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Sara most popular?

Sara peaked in 1981, when 11,359 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Sara rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Sara has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1981, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.