Samantha
Masculine
Samantha is given to girls far more often — 592,847 girls against 1,205 boys since 1880. See Samantha as a girl name
Samantha appears in American records before anybody can explain it and stays rare for two centuries. Then a television series about a suburban housewife who was secretly a witch put it on screen every week, and within four years it was one of the fastest-rising names in the country.
How old is the name Samantha?
Samantha first appears in US birth records in 1965 — 60 years ago. The typical Samantha alive today was born around 1990, making them about 35 years old. About 1,200 people named Samantha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Samantha most popular?
Samantha peaked in 1989, reaching #926 nationally. See the whole 1989 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Samantha
The program ran through the middle of the nineteen-sixties and the name went with it, which is one of the cleanest examples in the record of a single show moving a name. Two decades later a different Samantha did something that had nothing to do with television. A ten-year-old in Maine, worried about nuclear war, wrote to the new Soviet leader asking whether he was going to start one; he wrote back, at length, and invited her to visit. She went, spent two weeks in the country, was on the news constantly in both places, and became for a short time the most visible child in the world. She died in a plane crash at thirteen. A monument to her stands in Maine and another was raised in Moscow.
Meaningnot established
Not established
No source has ever been established. It is often given as a feminine of Samuel with an ending borrowed from somewhere, and that is a guess rather than a finding; the ending does not correspond to any known feminising suffix in English. The name simply appears, mostly in New England and the South, and nobody wrote down what they meant by it.
Pronouncing Samantha
suh-MAN-thuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The th is the unvoiced one, as in thin; some speakers voice it, which is a regional habit rather than a mistake.
Nicknames for Samantha
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
- 1965
- Most boys named
- 1989120 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #926reached in 1989
- Change vs 2016
- 0.0%5 in 2017, from 5
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.
Samantha in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Samantha in Italian — same name
- Samanta in Spanish — same name
- Samantha in French — same name
Samanthas among us
people named Samantha are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Samantha sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The name is completely established across the English-speaking world and beyond.
- Sam is a short, plain, adult everyday form available from the first day.
- It is spelled the same way in Italian, French and Spanish.
- The record carries it for boys in small numbers, so it is not quite an absolute signal.
- There is no meaning to give a child, which surprises people who assume every name has one.
- It is closely associated with one television character for anyone over a certain age.
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Samantha
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Samanthas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Samantha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Samantha in 2025?
- Samantha is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Samantha with classmates?
- Samantha will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More S names
The most-given names starting with S, all years combined.
Steven#271 · Stephen#383 · Samuel#18 · Scott#534 · Sean#489 · Shawn#681 · Stanley#863 · Steve#1609
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Samantha? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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