girls:
1k births since 1994
#4704 (18th percentile)
boys:
23.6k births since 1973
#748 (84th percentile)
overall:
24.6k births since 1973
#1619 (79th percentile)
The name Messiah is the #1,619 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 24,626 recorded births since 1973. This represents the 79.1% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 79.1% of all names). For boys, it ranks #748 (83.7% percentile) for all time with 23,614 births since 1973. For girls, it ranks #4,704 (17.7% percentile) for all time with 1,012 births since 1994.
Messiah first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1973 (1973 for boys and 1994 for girls). Birth data for Messiah is available in 48 out of the 51 years between 1973 and 2023 (48 years for boys and 29 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Messiah has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 95.9% of all recorded births being male.
For boys, Messiah reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 81.8% percentile (ranked #170) with 1,190 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 1,190 births per million (ranked 81.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1988, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Messiah ranks #184 for boys (79.9% percentile) with 1,043 births per million, which is 87.6% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Messiah reached its peak popularity in 2006, achieving the 7.1% percentile (ranked #897) with 35 births per million. The name was most common in 2006, with 35 births per million (ranked 7.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2010, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Messiah ranks #939 for girls (0.8% percentile) with 7 births per million, which is 21.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Messiah".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Messiah.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Messiah", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Messiah.
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Messiah. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 84.6% confident that Messiah is pronounced as muh-SAI-uh, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is mih-SAI-uh, at 7.7% confidence, with 3 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Messiah? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Messiah. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Messiah, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like M AH0 S AY1 AH0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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