Sahir
Masculine · “one who stays awake at night”
Sahir is two Arabic words that English spelling cannot keep apart. One means someone who stays awake through the night. The other means an enchanter. They are written with different letters in Arabic and land on the same five here.
How old is the name Sahir?
Sahir first appears in US birth records in 1980 — 45 years ago. The typical Sahir is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 900 people named Sahir are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sahir most popular?
Sahir peaked in 2024, reaching #2236 nationally. Today it ranks #2884, 648 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Where it comes from
From sahir to Sahir
The story of Sahir
Arabic poetry is full of the wakeful — the lover who cannot sleep, the traveler keeping watch, the worshipper up through the night — and sahir belongs to that vocabulary rather than to scripture, which makes it a literary name more than a religious one. It is used across the Arabic-speaking world and in Urdu, where it has been carried by poets and has a distinctly literary flavor. It reaches United States records with families from Pakistan, India and the Arab world.
Meaningscholars disagree
one who stays awake at night — or an enchanter
Arabic sahir, with the letter ha, is the active participle of sahira, 'to stay awake' — a wakeful one, someone who keeps vigil, which in poetry means a lover or a devotee. Arabic sahir, with a different h, means a sorcerer or enchanter. Both are real words and real names, distinguished clearly in Arabic script and not at all in English transliteration. The wakeful reading is the more commonly intended.
How the name formed
- sahir
- Sahir
Related forms: Sahir · Sahir · Sahir
Pronouncing Sahir
SAH-hir
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the h fully sounded. English speakers often let the h vanish, leaving SAIR, which loses the shape of the word.
Nicknames for Sahir
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
- 1980
- Most boys named
- 202464 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2236reached in 2024
- Change vs 2024
- −32.8%43 in 2025, from 64
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.
Sahir in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Sahir in Arabic — transliteration
- Sahir in Urdu — same name
- Sahir in Turkish — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Pennsylvania, New York, California.
Sahirs among us
people named Sahir are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 39,723 born in 2025 was named Sahir
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Sahir
- #2884
- Sahir on the 2025 chart
- #875
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Sahir went to 43 boys in 2025, but Saahir is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 53, which makes it the 875th most-given boys’ name of the year — 2,009 places above the chart.
- Sahir43
- Saahir10
About 1 boy in 32,228 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 39,723 for Sahir 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 Anuj test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sahir's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Anuj climbed just as high around 1979, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Anuj's path sketches the road Sahir is walking now.
Sahir 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 Sahir is headed
Sahir looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 23% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
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.
Sahir beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sahir in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Five letters, no silent ones, and readable at first sight in English.
- Recognized across Arabic and Urdu with a distinctly literary flavor.
- Both possible meanings are interesting rather than one being a problem.
- Its meaning depends on which Arabic word the family means, and English cannot record the difference.
- The middle h is easily lost by English speakers, which flattens the name.
- Sahir, Saahir and Zahir all circulate and Zahir is a different word entirely.
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What they receive
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Sahir
Masculine · #2884 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Sahirs 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 Sahir are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Sahir?
- Sahir is the most-used spelling in US records — 43 of the 53 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Saahir.
- How popular is the name Sahir in 2025?
- Sahir ranks #2884 among US boy names in 2025, with 43 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Sahir?
- About 1 in every 39,723 US boys born in 2025 was named Sahir — 43 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sahir with classmates?
- Sahir will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Sahir
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kamal#2884 · Blu#2884 · Rafi#2884 · Minh#2884 · Shaquille#2884 · Arnav#2884 · Jayven#2884 · Hiro#2884
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sahir? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sahir and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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