girls:
5.1k births since 1976
#2375 (58th percentile)
boys:
3.8k births since 1912
#1996 (56th percentile)
overall:
8.9k births since 1912
#2862 (63rd percentile)
The name Salem is the #2,862 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 8,896 recorded births since 1912. This represents the 63.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 63.0% of all names). For girls, it ranks #2,375 (58.4% percentile) for all time with 5,053 births since 1976. For boys, it ranks #1,996 (56.5% percentile) for all time with 3,843 births since 1912.
Salem first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1912 (1912 for boys and 1976 for girls). Birth data for Salem is available in 73 out of the 112 years between 1912 and 2023 (73 years for boys and 47 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 Salem has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (56.8% of all recorded births). In 2023, 62.4% of babies named Salem were girls. Interestingly, until around 2000, the name was more popular for boys (65.5% boys from 1912 to 1999), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (59.6% girls from 2000 to 2023).
For girls, Salem reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 59.3% percentile (ranked #386) with 417 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 417 births per million (ranked 59.3% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2007, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Salem is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #386 (59.3% percentile) with 417 births per million.
For boys, Salem reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 42.1% percentile (ranked #528) with 240 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 240 births per million (ranked 42.1% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1993, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Salem is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #528 (42.1% percentile) with 240 births per million.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Salem".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Salem.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Salem", 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 Salem.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Salem. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Salem is pronounced as SAY-luhm, which has 2 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 Salem? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Salem. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Salem, 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 S EY1 L AH0 M) 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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