February 07 2020
The most popular name in Iran today for new-born boys is Amir-Ali and for girls is Fatemeh, according to the National Organization for Civil Registration, where births and baby names are registered.
Preferred names for boys are overwhelmingly Arab/Islamic in origin, suggesting that many parents may fear a Persian name could inhibit a son’s career. Persian names for boys were far more common before the revolution. But for girls, non-Islamic names prevail on the Top Ten list—although the Number One and Number Two names are both Islamic.
The registry office said the list of preferred names was assembled from birth registrations in the first nine months of the current Persian year.
Most interesting is that one name for a girl baby is very popular in both Iran and the United States. Ava or its variants is popular in many countries. It is believed to be a variant of Eve, as in Adam and Eve. Ava was the sixth most popular name for a girl in Iran today. In the United States, it was the third most common name for girls in 2018.
The Social Security Administration publishes a list of popular baby names in the United States each year. It has not yet produced the list for 2019.
Here is the list of the 10 most popular boys’ names in Iran last year in order of preference: Amir-Ali, Mohammad, Ali, Amir-Hossain, Hossain, Abol-fazl, Amir-Abbas, Samyar, Mohammad-Taha and Arya. Arya (which is used for both boys and girls in Iran) and Samyar are Persian in origin. The rest are Islamic.
As for girls, the top 10 names are: Fatemeh, Zahra, Helma, Zeinab, Yasna, Ava, Mersana, Nazanin-Zahra, Baran and Fatemeh-Zahra. Fatemeh, Zahra and Zeinab are Islamic and have long been popular names for women in Iran. Mersana and Nazanin are Persian. Baran is Kurdish. Yasna is Zoroastrian. Helma appears in many cultures and languages and has origins in Arab, Indian and German areas.
There seems to be a preference in both Iran and the United States for female names that end with an “a” sound. In both Iran and the United States, seven of the most popular girls’ names end with that sound; in the United States, the top five all end in that sound.
Here are the top 10 boys’ names in the United States in 2018: Liam, Noah, William, James, Oliver, Benjamin, Elijah, Lucas, Mason and Logan. The top 10 for girls are: Emma, Olivia, Ava, Isabella, Sophia, Charlotte, Mia, Amelia, Harper and Evelyn. (Harper, normally a boy’s name, seems to have been popularized by the late Harper Lee, female author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a novel taught in most American schools.)
Of those 20 American names, only Noah and Elijah, both Old Testament prophets, are overtly biblical in origin.
For those looking for crossover names—names that can be used in both Iran the United States without sounding “foreign”—there are no such names among the 100 most popular male names used in the US in 2018. But for girls, Arya was the 19th most name in the US in 2018, while Layla ranked 27th, Ariana 68th and Arianna 95th.
Popular American male names that have similar but not identical names in Persian are Alexander (11th in US), Jacob (13th) and David (22nd).
