Jamaal
Masculine · “beauty”
Jamaal is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 8,542 boys against 45 girls since 1880.
Jamaal is beauty, in Arabic — and not decorative beauty but the whole quality, the word a philosopher would use. It is one of the divine attributes in Islamic theology.
How old is the name Jamaal?
Jamaal first appears in US birth records in 1970 — 55 years ago. The typical Jamaal alive today was born around 1987, making them about 38 years old. About 8,200 people named Jamaal are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jamaal most popular?
Jamaal peaked in 1982, reaching #286 nationally. Today it ranks #4050, 3,764 places below that high. See the whole 1982 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From jamal to Jamaal
The story of Jamaal
Jamal is a long-established Arabic name across the Muslim world, and it entered African American use in the later twentieth century — part of a broad and deliberate turn toward names from Arabic and African traditions rather than European ones, which followed the growth of Islam in Black American communities and a wider reclaiming of naming. The doubled-a spelling Jamaal appears from the 1970s and peaked around 1975.
Meaning
beauty, grace
From the Arabic jamal, 'beauty' or 'grace'. Al-Jamil, 'the Beautiful', is one of the names of God in Islamic tradition, and the root j-m-l underlies a family of words about beauty and completeness. The meaning is transparent to any Arabic speaker.
How the name formed
- jamal
- Jamal
- Jamaal
Related forms: جمال · Jamal · Cemal · Jamal
Pronouncing Jamaal
juh-MAHL
Two syllables, stress on the second. The doubled a marks the long Arabic vowel, which the single-a spelling leaves implicit.
Nicknames for Jamaal
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
- 1970
- Most boys named
- 1982715 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #286reached in 1982
- Change vs 2024
- −23.5%26 in 2025, from 34
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.
Jamaal in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- جمال in Arabic — transliteration
- Jamal in English — spelling variant
- Cemal in Turkish — related form
- Jamal in Swahili — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Florida, Texas, Georgia.
Jamaals among us
people named Jamaal are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 65,695 born in 2025 was named Jamaal
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Jamaal
- #4050
- Jamaal on the 2025 chart
- #727
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Jamaal went to 26 boys in 2025, but Jamal and Jamall are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 202, which makes it the 727th most-given boys’ name of the year — 3,323 places above the chart.
About 1 boy in 8,456 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 65,695 for Jamaal 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 Sammie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jamaal's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Sammie climbed just as high around 1944, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Sammie's path sketches the road Jamaal is walking now.
Jamaal 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 Jamaal is headed
Jamaal 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.
Jamaal beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jamaal in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is transparent and unambiguously positive to hundreds of millions of speakers.
- It is recognized across the Arab world, Turkey, East Africa and South Asia.
- The doubled a is closer to the Arabic vowel length than the standard English spelling.
- Jamal is the commoner English spelling and will often be assumed.
- It is closely dated to the 1970s and 1980s in American records.
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What they receive
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Jamaal
Masculine · #4050 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jamaals are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 8,200 people named Jamaal are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Jamaal?
- Jamaal is one of 3 recorded spellings. Jamal is the more common one — 169 births in 2025 against 26 for Jamaal.
- How popular is the name Jamaal in 2025?
- Jamaal ranks #4050 among US boy names in 2025, with 26 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jamaal?
- About 1 in every 65,695 US boys born in 2025 was named Jamaal — 26 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jamaal with classmates?
- Jamaal will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jamaal
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Myer#4050 · Hewitt#4050 · Antonino#4050 · Egan#4050 · Johnmichael#4050 · Gauge#4050 · Emran#4050 · Freeman#4050
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jamaal? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jamaal and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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