Safaa
Feminine · “purity”
Safaa is clarity in Arabic: water without sediment, a sky without cloud, a friendship without reservation. It is also a hill in Mecca, one of the two the pilgrims walk between, which gives an ordinary word a place on the map and in the rite.
How old is the name Safaa?
Safaa first appears in US birth records in 1990 — 35 years ago. The typical Safaa is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 500 people named Safaa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Safaa most popular?
Safaa peaked in 2016, reaching #4250 nationally. Today it ranks #5099, 849 places below that high. See the whole 2016 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From safa to Safaa
The story of Safaa
The pilgrimage rite includes walking seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa, in memory of a woman searching for water for her child, and the Qur'an names them both. The word itself is ordinary Arabic, used for clear water and for clarity of feeling, and it has been given as a name across the Arabic-speaking world for centuries. The doubled a in this spelling marks a long vowel that a single a would leave ambiguous in English.
Meaning
purity; clarity; serenity
Arabic safa, from a root about being clear or unclouded. The same root gives the word for a close friend, one with whom there is nothing hidden, and names the hill al-Safa in Mecca.
How the name formed
- safa
- Safaa
Related forms: صفاء · Safa · Safa
Pronouncing Safaa
sah-FAH
Two syllables with the stress at the end, the second held long, which is what the doubled a marks.
Nicknames for Safaa
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
- 1990
- Most girls named
- 201634 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4250reached in 2016
- Change vs 2024
- +56.3%25 in 2025, from 16
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.
Safaa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- صفاء in Arabic — transliteration
- Safa in Turkish — same name
- Safa in Urdu — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, California.
Safaas among us
people named Safaa are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 64,291 born in 2025 was named Safaa
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Safaa
- #5099
- Safaa on the 2025 chart
- #688
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Safaa went to 25 girls in 2025, but Safa and Safah are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 279, which makes it the 688th most-given girls’ name of the year — 4,411 places above the chart.
- Safa249
- Safaa25
- Safah5
About 1 girl in 5,761 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 64,291 for Safaa 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 Evonna test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Safaa's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Evonna climbed just as high around 1939, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Evonna's path sketches the road Safaa is walking now.
Safaa 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 Safaa is headed
Safaa is easing off slowly — about 16% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
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.
Safaa beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Safaa in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is a single clear image and can be stated in one word.
- It carries a place in the pilgrimage rite, which is a real inheritance.
- Both syllables exist in English, so the name survives transliteration intact.
- Safa, Safaa and Safaah are all in use, so records within a family may differ.
- English readers may treat the double a as a typing error.
- English speakers may stress the first syllable, which changes the rhythm.
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What they receive
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Safaa
Feminine · #5099 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Safaas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Safaa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Safaa?
- Safaa is one of 3 recorded spellings. Safa is the more common one — 249 births in 2025 against 25 for Safaa.
- How popular is the name Safaa in 2025?
- Safaa ranks #5099 among US girl names in 2025, with 25 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Safaa?
- About 1 in every 64,291 US girls born in 2025 was named Safaa — 25 in all.
- Will my child share the name Safaa with classmates?
- Safaa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Safaa
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Janette#5099 · Loraine#5099 · Delfina#5099 · Hali#5099 · Mecca#5099 · Zoi#5099 · Afia#5099 · Emelie#5099
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Safaa? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Safaa and another name?
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Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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