Salah
Masculine · “righteousness”
Salah is given to both — 990 boys and 195 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Salah is an Arabic word for rightness — the state of a thing being sound and as it should be. It is the first half of the name English knows as Saladin, and it has been in use for well over a thousand years.
How old is the name Salah?
Salah first appears in US birth records in 1972 — 53 years ago. The typical Salah alive today was born around 2010, making them about 15 years old. About 1,000 people named Salah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Salah most popular?
Salah peaked in 2019, reaching #2626 nationally. Today it ranks #3240, 614 places below that high. See the whole 2019 chart.
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Salah
The root behind salah runs through Arabic in words for reconciliation, reform and soundness, and it produced a family of names — Salah, Salih, Musleh — used since the earliest Islamic period. Salah al-Din, the twelfth-century sultan whose name means the rightness of the faith, made the compound famous in Europe as Saladin. The name is used across the Arab world and reaches American records with families from Egypt, the Levant and North Africa.
Meaningscholars disagree
righteousness, goodness
The name is generally from the Arabic root for being sound, upright or in good order, giving salah, rightness. A second word written the same way in Roman letters is the term for the ritual prayer, which is a different Arabic word entirely; families sometimes read the name in that sense too.
Pronouncing Salah
sah-LAH
Two syllables with the stress on the second and a soft final h. English speakers often say SAL-uh.
Nicknames for Salah
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
- 1972
- Most boys named
- 201949 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2626reached in 2019
- Change vs 2024
- +9.1%36 in 2025, from 33
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.
Salah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Salah in Arabic — transliteration
- Salih in Turkish — related form
- Soleh in Indonesian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, Minnesota, Texas.
Salahs among us
people named Salah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 47,447 born in 2025 was named Salah
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 Kavan test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Salah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kavan climbed just as high around 1995, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kavan's path sketches the road Salah is walking now.
Salah 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 Salah is headed
Salah should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Salah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Salah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled meaning with a documented record from the earliest Islamic period.
- Five letters and two syllables, easy to write and to say.
- Sal is a short form already familiar to English speakers.
- The stress is moved to the front by English speakers, which changes the name's shape.
- A very well-known footballer carries the name as a surname, and that is now the first association for many.
- Salah and Salih are close and are sometimes treated as one name and sometimes as two.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Salah
Masculine · #3240 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Salahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Salah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Salah in 2025?
- Salah ranks #3240 among US boy names in 2025, with 36 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Salah?
- About 1 in every 47,447 US boys born in 2025 was named Salah — 36 in all.
- Will my child share the name Salah with classmates?
- Salah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Salah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Eugenio#3240 · Pace#3240 · Stoney#3240 · Dany#3240 · Rasheed#3240 · Abdirahman#3240 · Mykah#3240 · Lowell#3240
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Salah? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Salah and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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