Akeelah
Feminine · “Possibly Arabic "intelligent”
Akeelah has one of the cleanest single-cause curves in the recent American data. The name is essentially absent before 2006, spikes to #708 in that year, and falls away immediately afterward. A film about a girl from South Los Angeles competing in a spelling bee was released in April 2006, and the name is her name.
How old is the name Akeelah?
Akeelah first appears in US birth records in 1989 — 36 years ago. The typical Akeelah alive today was born around 2008, making them about 17 years old. About 1,500 people named Akeelah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Akeelah most popular?
Akeelah peaked in 2006, reaching #708 nationally. Today it ranks #7133, 6,425 places below that high. See the whole 2006 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aqila to Akeelah
Our story of Akeelah
A name that appears in a single year and disappears is not a fashion; it is an event, and it leaves a signature that nothing else produces. A fashion rises over four or five years, holds, and declines over ten. An event rises in one year, peaks in that year or the next, and is gone in three. Akeelah is the second kind. Its 2006 spike is the sharpest thing in its part of the data, and the cause is a single film released that spring in which the title character is an eleven-year-old speller. What makes the case unusually clean is that the name had no prior existence to blur the signal — no established spelling, no similar name absorbing part of the wave. Everyone named Akeelah in America is, in effect, dated to within about twenty-four months.
Meaningscholars disagree
Possibly Arabic "intelligent, wise"
Aqila, from the Arabic root ʿ-q-l concerning reason and intellect, means intelligent or sensible and is a genuine Arabic name usually romanised Aqeela or Akeela. Whether the film's name was drawn from it is not documented. Akeelah with this spelling has no independent etymology, and the connection to the Arabic word is plausible rather than established.
How the name formed
- Aqila
- Akeelah
Related forms: عقيلة (ʿAqila)
Pronouncing Akeelah
uh-KEE-luh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle and a long EE — which the ee spelling guarantees. The final h is silent. Akeelah and Akela are said the same way, though the second is a separate name from a well-known children's book.
Nicknames for Akeelah
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1989
- Most girls named
- 2006403 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #708reached in 2006
- Change vs 2024
- −28.6%15 in 2025, from 21
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Akeelah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- عقيلة (ʿAqila) in Arabic — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Florida, Illinois.
Akeelahs among us
people named Akeelah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 107,151 born in 2025 was named Akeelah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Akeelah
- #7133
- Akeelah on the 2025 chart
- #938
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Akeelah went to 15 girls in 2025, but Akela is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 22, which makes it the 938th most-given girls’ name of the year — 6,195 places above the chart.
- Akeelah15
- Akela7
About 1 girl in 73,058 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 107,151 for Akeelah itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Jenni test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Akeelah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jenni climbed just as high around 1972, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jenni's path sketches the road Akeelah is walking now.
Akeelah sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Akeelah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Akeelah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The film association is genuinely positive — a story about a child's intelligence and effort.
- The ee spelling removes any ambiguity about the middle vowel.
- The rhythm is completely familiar to American ears.
- The name is dated to a single year more precisely than almost any other.
- The Arabic connection is plausible but not documented.
- Akeelah, Akeela and Aqeela are all in use.
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Akeelah
Feminine · #7133 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Akeelahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,500 people named Akeelah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Akeelah?
- Akeelah is the most-used spelling in US records — 15 of the 22 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Akela.
- How popular is the name Akeelah in 2025?
- Akeelah ranks #7133 among US girl names in 2025, with 15 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Akeelah?
- About 1 in every 107,151 US girls born in 2025 was named Akeelah — 15 in all.
- Will my child share the name Akeelah with classmates?
- Akeelah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Akeelah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Pennie#7133 · Zina#7133 · Elzie#7133 · Rosabel#7133 · Adelene#7133 · Cruz#7133 · Kansas#7133 · Ione#7133
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Akeelah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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