Ismail
Masculine · “God hears”
Ismail is the Arabic form of a name that has been spoken for thousands of years: Hebrew Yishmaʿel, "God hears." It belongs to Ibrahim's elder son, honored as a prophet in the Quran and tied to the building of the Kaaba in Mecca, and it travels today through Arabic, Turkish, Bosnian, Persian, Urdu and Malay with barely a change of shape. Three syllables that rise to the end — iss-mah-EEL.
How old is the name Ismail?
Ismail first appears in US birth records in 1962 — 63 years ago. The typical Ismail alive today was born around 2012, making them about 13 years old. About 4,000 people named Ismail are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Ismail most popular?
Ismail peaked in 2025, reaching #1064 nationally. Today it ranks #1064, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Yishmaʿel to Ismail
The story of Ismail
The name begins in the Hebrew Bible as Yishmaʿel, the son of Abraham and Hagar, and passed into Greek as Ismaēl when Jewish scholars in Alexandria translated the scriptures. Arabic kept its own Semitic form, Ismāʿīl, and the Quran names him a prophet and the son who helped Ibrahim raise the House at Mecca — which is why the name spread with Islam from Morocco to Indonesia. Ottoman Turkish gave it İsmail, borne by sultans and by generations of ordinary families across the Balkans and Anatolia. English took the older biblical route instead and arrived at Ishmael, so the two spellings are the same ancient name that walked out of the Near East by different doors.
Meaning
God hears, or God will hear
From Hebrew yishmaʿ ("he hears") plus El ("God"). The Arabic Ismāʿīl carries the same sense.
How the name formed
- Yishmaʿel
- Ismaēl
- Ismāʿīl
- İsmail
Related forms: İsmail · Ishmael · Ismael · Esmail · Ismaël · إسماعيل
Pronouncing Ismail
iss-mah-EEL
The Arabic and Turkish pronunciations both put the weight on the last syllable. English speakers meeting it in writing sometimes try IZ-mayl or slide it toward Ishmael; one clear correction usually settles it.
Nicknames for Ismail
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
- 1962
- Most boys named
- 2025204 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1064reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +25.2%204 in 2025, from 163
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.
Ismail in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- İsmail in Turkish — spelling variant
- Ishmael in English (biblical) — same name
- Ismael in Spanish — spelling variant
- Esmail in Persian — same name
- Ismaël in French — spelling variant
- إسماعيل in Arabic — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, California, Texas.
Ismails among us
people named Ismail are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 8,373 born in 2025 was named Ismail
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Hipolito test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Ismail's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Hipolito climbed just as high around 1904, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Hipolito's path sketches the road Ismail is walking now.
Ismail 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 Ismail is headed
Ismail 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.
Ismail beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Ismail in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Recognized without translation across Arabic, Turkish, Bosnian, Persian, Urdu, Malay and Indonesian communities.
- A documented line running from the Hebrew Bible through the Quran to the present, with the spelling almost unchanged in Arabic.
- Spells itself as it sounds once the stress is known, and needs no accent marks in English.
- Widely used as a surname too, so the letter combination is already familiar to many American ears.
- Has close cousins — Ishmael, Ismael, Esmail — for relatives who prefer a form from their own language.
- The stress falls on the final syllable, and Americans often guess wrong on first reading. Expect to correct it in classrooms and at appointments, which is a small ongoing task rather than a real obstacle.
- The Spanish spelling Ismael is well established in the US, so forms and rosters may come back with the letters swapped. Worth checking documents carefully.
- English readers may associate the sound with Ishmael, the narrator of Melville's Moby-Dick. It is a literary link, not a burden, but it is where some minds will go first.
- Almost no chance of a namesake in the same classroom — welcome to some families, and something to weigh if you would rather your child's name be immediately familiar to teachers.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Ismail
Masculine · #1064 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Ismails are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,000 people named Ismail are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Ismail in 2025?
- Ismail ranks #1064 among US boy names in 2025, with 204 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Ismail?
- About 1 in every 8,373 US boys born in 2025 was named Ismail — 204 in all.
- Will my child share the name Ismail with classmates?
- Ismail will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Ismail
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Neo#1064 · Ronnie#1064 · Eider#1064 · Alaric#1063 · Zakari#1060 · Henrik#1060 · Nixon#1060 · Billy#1068
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Ismail? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Ismail and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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