Sabrina
Feminine · “From Sabrina”
Sabrina is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 142,601 girls against 347 boys since 1880.
Sabrina began as the Latin name of a river — the Severn, which runs down through the English border country — and it reached us through a drowned girl in a twelfth-century chronicle, a water nymph in a seventeenth-century masque, a 1950s Broadway play and film, and a comic-book witch. Few names have traveled by so many different roads. In the mouth it is three easy syllables with the stress in the middle, and it sounds the same in English, Spanish, Italian and German.
How old is the name Sabrina?
Sabrina first appears in US birth records in 1916 — 109 years ago. The typical Sabrina alive today was born around 1991, making them about 34 years old. About 138,000 people named Sabrina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sabrina most popular?
Sabrina peaked in 1997, reaching #53 nationally. Today it ranks #321, 268 places below that high. See the whole 1997 chart.
Where it comes from
From Sabrina (Roman name of the River Severn) to Sabrina
The story of Sabrina
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written in the twelfth century, tells of Habren, a king's illegitimate daughter drowned in the river that afterwards bore her name — the Welsh Hafren, the Latin Sabrina, the English Severn. John Milton made her a river goddess in his masque Comus in the 1630s, and from there Sabrina passed into English poetry as a name for the Severn's spirit. It was Samuel Taylor's play Sabrina Fair and the film made from it in the mid-1950s that turned a literary name into a name given to babies, and a long-running comic and its television adaptation carried it to its high point a few decades later. The name has been rising again lately, after a long quiet stretch.
Meaning
From Sabrina, the Roman name for the River Severn in Britain
That the name is the river's name is not in doubt. What the river name itself meant is another matter: it predates the Roman record and no reading has been established, so the trail stops at the water.
How the name formed
- SabrinaRoman name of the River Severn
- HafrenWelsh
- SevernEnglish
- Sabrinagiven name
Related forms: Sabrina · Sabrina · Sabrina · Sabrina · Sabrine · Hafren
Pronouncing Sabrina
suh-BREE-nuh
Stress on the middle syllable. The pronunciation holds steady across English, Spanish, Italian and German, which is unusual for a three-syllable name.
Nicknames for Sabrina
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
- 1916
- Most girls named
- 19965,774 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #53reached in 1997
- Change vs 2023
- +23.2%956 in 2025, from 776
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.
Sabrina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Sabrina in Italian — same name
- Sabrina in Spanish — same name
- Sabrina in Portuguese — same name
- Sabrina in German — same name
- Sabrine in French — related form
- Hafren in Welsh — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Florida, Texas.
Sabrinas among us
people named Sabrina are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 1,681 born in 2025 was named Sabrina
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 Arlene test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sabrina's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Arlene climbed just as high around 1934, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Arlene's path sketches the road Sabrina is walking now.
Sabrina is on its second act. Revived names age gently: the generation that wore them first is far enough away that the name feels classic rather than dated.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Sabrina is headed
Sabrina should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Sabrina beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sabrina in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A spelling almost everyone in the US already knows how to write, thanks to decades of film and television use.
- Says itself the same way in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German — useful in a bilingual family.
- Several ready-made short forms, from Bri to Rina, without needing to be shortened.
- A written record going back to the twelfth century, with a river, a chronicle and a Milton masque behind it.
- The comic and television witch is still the first association for a lot of people, and it comes with a joke or two attached. It has faded considerably, but it has not gone.
- Bri and Bree are shared territory with Brianna, Brielle and Briana, so the short form will not be distinctive even if the full name is.
- Sabina is a separate, older Roman name that looks and sounds close enough to cause the occasional mix-up in writing and over the phone.
- Strongest in California, Florida and Texas, so how familiar it feels can depend a good deal on where a family lives.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Sabrina
Feminine · #321 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Sabrinas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 138,000 people named Sabrina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Sabrina in 2025?
- Sabrina ranks #321 among US girl names in 2025, with 956 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Sabrina?
- About 1 in every 1,681 US girls born in 2025 was named Sabrina — 956 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sabrina with classmates?
- Sabrina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Sabrina
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Samara#320 · Marley#322 · Kali#323 · Madisson#319 · Frances#318 · Nina#324 · Gabriela#317 · Serena#325
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sabrina? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sabrina and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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