Amayah
Feminine
Amayah is the American spelling of a name that already existed in the Basque Country and northern Spain as Amaia and Amaya — a hill town in Burgos, a novel title, a name carried by real Spanish and Basque women long before it reached US birth records. The added -h at the end places it alongside Aaliyah, Amiyah and Maliyah, the family of vowel-rich spellings that grew up in American naming over the last few decades. Three open syllables, no hard consonants anywhere in it.
How old is the name Amayah?
Amayah first appears in US birth records in 1998 — 27 years ago. The typical Amayah is a kid of about 8 — this name's wave is very recent. About 5,600 people named Amayah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Amayah most popular?
Amayah peaked in 2024, reaching #700 nationally. Today it ranks #841, 141 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Amaia to Amayah
The story of Amayah
The line begins in the western Pyrenees and northern Castile, where Amaia and Amaya have been used as given names and where Amaya names a real hill and an ancient fortified site in Burgos. A nineteenth-century Spanish historical novel titled with that name helped push it from geography into the baptismal register, and it spread through Spanish-speaking communities from there. In the United States the sound arrived largely through Spanish-speaking families and was then respelled the way American naming reshapes many imported sounds — the -ah ending that Aaliyah and Amiyah share. Amayah is that respelling: a young form of an old name, and its strongest states are exactly where you would expect a Spanish-rooted name to land.
Meaningscholars disagree
Most often traced to Basque *amaia*, "the end"
The parent forms pull in more than one direction. In Basque, *amaia* means "the end", and Amaia is a long-established given name there. Amaya is also a place — a hill and old fortified settlement in the province of Burgos, Spain — so for many families the name is a location before it is a word. Separately, Amaya exists as a Japanese surname written with characters for rain and night. The English spelling Amayah sits downstream of all of these, which is why no single reading owns it.
How the name formed
- Amaia
- Amaya
- Amayah
Related forms: Amaia · Amaya · Amiyah · Amaia · Amaya
Pronouncing Amayah
uh-MY-uh
The Spanish and Basque parent forms give uh-MY-uh, and that is the usual American reading. Some families say uh-MAY-uh instead, following the look of the letters. Both are in real use, so expect to state which one you mean.
Nicknames for Amayah
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
- 1998
- Most girls named
- 2022419 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #700reached in 2024
- Change vs 2024
- −19.7%323 in 2025, from 402
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.
Amayah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Amaia in Basque — related form
- Amaya in Spanish — related form
- Amiyah in English (US) — spelling variant
- Amaia in English (US) — spelling variant
- Amaya in Japanese — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Florida, Texas.
Amayahs among us
people named Amayah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 4,976 born in 2025 was named Amayah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Amayah
- #841
- Amayah on the 2025 chart
- #105
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Amayah went to 323 girls in 2025, but Amaya, Amaia and Amaiah and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 8 spellings went to 2,743, which makes it the 105th most-given girls’ name of the year — 736 places above the chart.
and 2 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 586 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 4,976 for Amayah 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 Eloisa test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Amayah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Eloisa climbed just as high around 1919, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Eloisa's path sketches the road Amayah is walking now.
Amayah 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
Where Amayah is headed
Amayah 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.
Amayah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Amayah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Comes with short forms that already work on their own — Maya, Aya, Amy — so there is a casual option without inventing one.
- The parent forms Amaia and Amaya are long established in Basque and Spanish naming, giving the name real roots outside American fashion.
- Spelled phonetically for English readers: a stranger seeing it written will usually get close on the first try.
- Strongest in California, Florida and Texas, and it travels comfortably between English- and Spanish-speaking households.
- Rare enough that classroom duplicates are unlikely, while the sound itself is widely familiar.
- The spelling will need repeating. Amaya, Amaia and Amiyah are all in circulation for the same sound, and Amayah is not the default guess.
- Two pronunciations compete — uh-MY-uh and uh-MAY-uh — so she will likely correct people occasionally, or simply accept both.
- This spelling's whole history in the United States is recent, so nearly everyone carrying it is a child. There are no adult Amayahs to point to yet, and the name reads clearly as of this moment rather than inherited.
- Rare names bring the opposite of the crowded-classroom problem: she will rarely meet another, which some children enjoy and some find tiring.
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What they receive
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Amayah
Feminine · #841 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Amayahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,600 people named Amayah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Amayah?
- Amayah is one of 6 recorded spellings. Amaya is the more common one — 1,723 births in 2025 against 323 for Amayah.
- How popular is the name Amayah in 2025?
- Amayah ranks #841 among US girl names in 2025, with 323 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Amayah?
- About 1 in every 4,976 US girls born in 2025 was named Amayah — 323 in all.
- Will my child share the name Amayah with classmates?
- Amayah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Amayah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Michaela#841 · Hunter#841 · Sloan#838 · Honey#844 · Ensley#844 · Luz#838 · Jaliyah#838 · Elani#844
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Amayah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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