Samiha
Feminine · “forgiving”
Samiha comes from a verb about letting things go. Arabic samaha means to permit, to forgive, to be generous with — and the adjective built on it covers all three at once, which English needs several words to do. The name is the feminine of Samih, and both are in ordinary use across the Arabic-speaking world.
How old is the name Samiha?
Samiha first appears in US birth records in 1983 — 42 years ago. The typical Samiha alive today was born around 2007, making them about 18 years old. About 500 people named Samiha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Samiha most popular?
Samiha peaked in 2000, reaching #4400 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 10,542 places below that high. See the whole 2000 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From samih to Samiha
The story of Samiha
Arabic names are very often adjectives, and they come in matched pairs — a man's form and a woman's form of the same quality, differing by one letter. Karim and Karima, Jamil and Jamila, Samih and Samiha all work this way, and a family naming children across several years may use both halves of the same word. That symmetry is a feature of the language rather than a naming fashion, and it means an Arabic name usually announces its own meaning to anyone who speaks it. The name reached American records through immigration from across the Arabic-speaking world and, in the upper Midwest, through the East African communities that settled there.
Meaning
forgiving; generous; magnanimous
The root s-m-h runs through a family of words about permitting, tolerating and giving freely, and the adjective samih holds all of that together — a person who forgives easily and gives without counting is one word in Arabic. Samiha is its feminine. The meaning is not contested anywhere the language is spoken. English has no single word that covers the same ground, which is why translations of the name vary between generous, forgiving and tolerant without any of them being wrong.
How the name formed
- samih
- Samiha
Related forms: سميحة · Semiha · Samiha · Semiha
Pronouncing Samiha
sah-MEE-hah
sah-MEE-hah, three syllables, stress in the middle, the h at the end lightly sounded rather than silent. English speakers often drop the final h entirely and produce sah-MEE-uh, which loses the consonant Arabic actually has there.
Nicknames for Samiha
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
- 1983
- Most girls named
- 200631 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4400reached in 2000
- Change vs 2024
- −37.5%5 in 2025, from 8
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.
Samiha in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- سميحة in Arabic — transliteration
- Semiha in Turkish — same name
- Samiha in Bengali — same name
- Semiha in Bosnian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Minnesota, New York.
Samihas among us
people named Samiha are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Samiha
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 Ayame test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Samiha's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ayame climbed just as high around 1920, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ayame's path sketches the road Samiha is walking now.
Samiha 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
Samiha beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Samiha 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 generous in both senses and unusually pleasant to explain.
- It is a working name across the Arab world, Turkey, the Balkans and South Asia without translation.
- Sami works as a short form and is already familiar in English.
- The final h is a real consonant in Arabic and a silent letter to English eyes, so the name loses something in an American mouth.
- Samia, Samiya and Semiha are all close, and this spelling will be confused with them.
- Sam arrives quickly in American settings and takes the name somewhere quite different.
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Samiha
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Samihas 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 Samiha are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Samiha in 2025?
- Samiha ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Samiha?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Samiha — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Samiha with classmates?
- Samiha will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Samiha
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Sophya#14942 · Lyllian#14942 · Sarrah#14942 · Mellanie#14942 · Kally#14942 · Dyanna#14942 · Morgann#14942 · Sabryna#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Samiha? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Samiha and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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