Jaelah
Feminine · “mountain goat”
Jael kills a general with a tent peg. He is asleep in her tent, having asked for water and been given milk, and she drives the peg through his temple into the ground. The poem celebrating it is one of the oldest passages in the Hebrew Bible — older, probably, than the prose account beside it.
How old is the name Jaelah?
Jaelah first appears in US birth records in 1994 — 31 years ago. The typical Jaelah alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 900 people named Jaelah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jaelah most popular?
Jaelah peaked in 2011, reaching #2796 nationally. Today it ranks #11932, 9,136 places below that high. See the whole 2011 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From yael to Jaelah
The story of Jaelah
The Song of Deborah in Judges 5 is written in a Hebrew so archaic that it is hard to translate, and scholars date it centuries before most of the surrounding text. It is a victory poem, and its climax is Jael's tent: the general Sisera flees the battle on foot, is taken in and given milk, sleeps, and does not wake. The poem then turns and imagines his mother at a window wondering why his chariot is late, which is one of the coldest passages in the Bible. Jael is not an Israelite; she is a Kenite woman with her own reasons. The name has been in continuous Hebrew use since, and in Israel today it is entirely ordinary.
Meaning
mountain goat, ibex
Hebrew yael is the ordinary word for a wild goat or ibex, the animal that lives on cliff faces in the Judaean desert. It is still the modern Hebrew word for the animal and a common Israeli woman's name. The -ah ending on this spelling is American and adds nothing.
How the name formed
- yael
- Jael
- Jaelah
Related forms: Yael
Pronouncing Jaelah
jay-EL-uh
Three syllables, stress in the middle. The Hebrew Yael has two, ya-EL, with a y at the front rather than a j — the j is what Latin transcription did to the Hebrew letter.
Nicknames for Jaelah
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
- 1994
- Most girls named
- 201162 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2796reached in 2011
- Change vs 2024
- −63.2%7 in 2025, from 19
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.
Jaelah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Yael in Hebrew — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Florida.
Jaelahs among us
people named Jaelah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 229,610 born in 2025 was named Jaelah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Jaelah
- #11932
- Jaelah on the 2025 chart
- #932
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Jaelah went to 7 girls in 2025, but Jaela is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 28, which makes it the 932nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 11,000 places above the chart.
- Jaela21
- Jaelah7
About 1 girl in 57,402 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 229,610 for Jaelah 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 Siarra test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jaelah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Siarra climbed just as high around 1996, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Siarra's path sketches the road Jaelah is walking now.
Jaelah 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
Jaelah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jaelah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled Hebrew meaning naming a real animal that still lives where the story is set.
- A documented biblical bearer with an unusually vivid scene of her own.
- Three open syllables with a clear central stress.
- Jaela, Jayla and Yael are all in use and all close.
- The story it comes from is a killing, described in detail, and readers who know it will say so.
- The Hebrew name begins with a y sound, so relatives using the original will say something noticeably different.
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Jaelah
Feminine · #11932 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jaelahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Jaelah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Jaelah?
- Jaelah is one of 2 recorded spellings. Jaela is the more common one — 21 births in 2025 against 7 for Jaelah.
- How popular is the name Jaelah in 2025?
- Jaelah ranks #11932 among US girl names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jaelah?
- About 1 in every 229,610 US girls born in 2025 was named Jaelah — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jaelah with classmates?
- Jaelah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jaelah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vina#11932 · Retta#11932 · Missouri#11932 · Iola#11932 · Eddie#11932 · Thomas#11932 · Louetta#11932 · Elvina#11932
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jaelah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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