Amariah
Feminine · Hebrew roots · “the Lord has said”
Amariah is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,763 girls against 28 boys since 1880.
Amariah sits in the genealogies of the Hebrew Bible — a priestly name from the books of Chronicles and Nehemiah, and one link in the ancestry the prophet Zephaniah is given at the opening of his book. In English it stayed almost entirely on the page for centuries, then began turning up on birth certificates in the United States, where it belongs to the same warm run of sounds as Amari and Mariah. Four syllables, stress on the third, ending in a vowel that softens the whole thing.
How old is the name Amariah?
Amariah first appears in US birth records in 1980 — 45 years ago. The typical Amariah is a kid of about 12 — this name's wave is very recent. About 3,700 people named Amariah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Amariah most popular?
Amariah peaked in 2025, reaching #1150 nationally. Today it ranks #1150, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Amaryah (Hebrew) to Amariah
The story of Amariah
The name is Hebrew, written Amaryah, and in scripture it belongs to men — several priests and Levites listed in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and an ancestor named in Zephaniah's genealogy. Because those books are mostly lists, the name traveled into English inside the King James Bible without ever picking up a saint, a king or a hymn to carry it into ordinary use. Its American life is recent and it arrived as a girl's name, alongside the wider family of Amari, Amara and Mariah, which share its vowels and its ending. So there are two Amariahs in the record: an ancient masculine one on the page, and a modern feminine one in the classroom.
Meaning
the Lord has said, or has promised
From Hebrew amar, to say or speak, joined to Yah, a short form of the divine name — the same second element as in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Obadiah.
How the name formed
- AmaryahHebrew
- AmariasLatin Vulgate
- AmariahEnglish Bible
Related forms: Amaryah · Amarías · Amarias · Amarias
Pronouncing Amariah
am-uh-RYE-uh
Four syllables with the stress on the third, so the ending rhymes with Mariah. A pronunciation closer to ah-mah-REE-ah is also heard, particularly from Hebrew and Spanish speakers.
Nicknames for Amariah
High
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
- 1980
- Most girls named
- 2025201 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1150reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +11.7%201 in 2025, from 180
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.
Amariah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Amaryah in Hebrew — transliteration
- Amarías in Spanish — same name
- Amarias in Latin — same name
- Amarias in Portuguese — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Amariahs among us
people named Amariah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 7,996 born in 2025 was named Amariah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Amariah
- #1150
- Amariah on the 2025 chart
- #602
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Amariah went to 201 girls in 2025, but Amaria, Amariyah and Amariya and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 6 spellings went to 386, which makes it the 602nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 548 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 4,164 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 7,996 for Amariah 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 Tehya test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Amariah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Tehya climbed just as high around 1998, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Tehya's path sketches the road Amariah is walking now.
Amariah is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Amariah is headed
Amariah should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Amariah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Amariah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A documented meaning with a clear Hebrew source — the same -iah ending found in Isaiah and Jeremiah.
- Written form appears in widely printed Bible genealogies, so the spelling has a fixed reference point.
- Shares its sound family with Amari, Amara and Mariah, all already familiar to English speakers.
- Short forms already exist and are easy: Mari, Ria, Ama.
- The sound invites competing spellings — Amaria, Amariya, Amariyah — so expect to spell it out, and to hear Mariah in echo whenever it is said aloud.
- In scripture the name belongs to men. That matters little in American usage, where it is recorded for girls, but anyone reading the biblical lists will meet it as a masculine name.
- It is uncommon enough that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate. That is often the appeal, and it also means teachers will be learning it from scratch each year.
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Amariah
Feminine · Hebrew roots · #1150 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Amariahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,700 people named Amariah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Amariah?
- Amariah is the most-used spelling in US records — 201 of the 386 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Amaria, Amariyah, Amariya, Amaryah and Amarya.
- How popular is the name Amariah in 2025?
- Amariah ranks #1150 among US girl names in 2025, with 201 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Amariah?
- About 1 in every 7,996 US girls born in 2025 was named Amariah — 201 in all.
- Will my child share the name Amariah with classmates?
- Amariah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Amariah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Dariana#1150 · Kathleen#1150 · Amyra#1150 · Adela#1150 · Sally#1150 · Jaycee#1150 · Kimora#1150 · Abril#1150
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Amariah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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