Meaning not yet researched.
Nala: US girls given the name each year, 1880 to 2025, from Social Security card applications. 317 in 2025. Its best rank was #679 in 2019.
US births per year · SSA card applications
Peaked at #679 in 2019; #856 in 2025. Every baby recorded as Nala in 2025 was a girl.
Baby name · US data 1880–2025
#856 for US girls in 2025. Its best year was 2019, at #679.
Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for any year. Years with fewer than five babies of a sex are not published by SSA and show as zero.
Nala: US girls given the name each year from 1880 to 2025. 317 girls in 2025. Peak: #679 in 2019 · most girls in one year: 428 (2019).
In 2025, 317 US girls were named Nala, making it the 856th most common girls’ name of the year, down 103 places from #753 in 2024. That is 58 fewer than the 375 girls named Nala in 2024. Its best rank for girls was #679, reached in 2019. That year also had the most girls given the name: 428. For comparison, it was #950 in 2015 and unranked in 1950.
Social Security card records list Nala in 33 years of the 146 from 1880 to 2025, starting in 1979 with 5 babies. In all, 6,138 US babies have been given the name, all of them girls. Its busiest decade was the 2010s, with 2,837 babies named Nala.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 3,683 US girls were named Nala; the busiest of those years was 2019, with 428. In 2025 that was about 1 in 5,070 of the girls in SSA’s list for the year.
Among the states, Nala ranked highest in Georgia in 2025, at #575 for girls there. It was not in the top 100 of any state. Related spellings in the SSA files include Nailah (4,848 babies since 1880), Nayla (3,579 babies since 1880), Nahla (3,236 babies since 1880) and Naila (3,235 babies since 1880). Rarer spellings such as Naylah, Nalaya and Nalla are summarised on this page.
Meaning not yet researched.
We publish a meaning only with a cited source and a confidence label, and never generate one. Meanings are being researched for the most common names first.
Rare spellings summarised here: Naylah (674), Nalaya (617), Nalla (122), Naela (104), Nalaia (75), Nayela (75), Nallah (53), Naola (44), Naylaa (31), Nahlah (27), Naiyla (23), Nahila (17), and more.
Numbers are all-time US births. Links come from Wikidata’s “said to be the same as” (P460, CC0) and our spelling rule: at most two letters different, with the same sound pattern.
No nicknames listed for Nala in the open dataset we use.
Source: carltonnorthern/nicknames (Apache-2.0).
US girls. Rank within each state. SSA leaves out states where fewer than five girls got the name, so 31 are not listed.
| State | Births 2025 | Rank 2025 | Rank 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 19 | #575 | #612 |
| Nevada | 5 | #580 | — |
| Alabama | 8 | #618 | #671 |
| Florida | 27 | #646 | #793 |
| Virginia | 11 | #693 | #917 |
| Maryland | 7 | #704 | #758 |
| Indiana | 9 | #708 | #1,047 |
| Ohio | 13 | #734 | #877 |
| Illinois | 13 | #735 | #1,037 |
| New Jersey | 10 | #759 | #646 |
| North Carolina | 13 | #763 | #875 |
| Michigan | 10 | #770 | #760 |
| Texas | 38 | #796 | #1,392 |
| Tennessee | 9 | #801 | #820 |
| Kentucky | 5 | #833 | — |
| South Carolina | 5 | #880 | #733 |
| Arizona | 7 | #885 | #1,211 |
| California | 31 | #931 | #1,079 |
| New York | 17 | #936 | #679 |
| Pennsylvania | 5 | #1,553 | #741 |
Births and national rank for each year SSA lists the name, newest first.
| Year | Girls | Girls rank | Boys | Boys rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 317 | #856 | — | — |
| 2024 | 375 | #753 | — | — |
| 2023 | 320 | #846 | — | — |
| 2022 | 351 | #804 | — | — |
| 2021 | 385 | #741 | — | — |
| 2020 | 406 | #695 | — | — |
| 2019 | 428 | #679 | — | — |
| 2018 | 374 | #742 | — | — |
| 2017 | 362 | #766 | — | — |
| 2016 | 365 | #777 | — | — |
| 2015 | 286 | #950 | — | — |
| 2014 | 267 | #994 | — | — |
| 2013 | 234 | #1,066 | — | — |
| 2012 | 238 | #1,059 | — | — |
| 2011 | 158 | #1,438 | — | — |
| 2010 | 125 | #1,692 | — | — |
| 2009 | 111 | #1,899 | — | — |
| 2008 | 119 | #1,820 | — | — |
| 2007 | 92 | #2,172 | — | — |
| 2006 | 102 | #1,972 | — | — |
| 2005 | 71 | #2,478 | — | — |
| 2004 | 94 | #1,985 | — | — |
| 2003 | 78 | #2,222 | — | — |
| 2002 | 48 | #3,052 | — | — |
| 2001 | 56 | #2,687 | — | — |
| 2000 | 51 | #2,848 | — | — |
| 1999 | 51 | #2,725 | — | — |
| 1998 | 54 | #2,556 | — | — |
| 1997 | 55 | #2,418 | — | — |
| 1996 | 51 | #2,499 | — | — |
| 1995 | 85 | #1,724 | — | — |
| 1994 | 24 | #4,340 | — | — |
| 1979 | 5 | #11,345 | — | — |
About the data: counts are Social Security card applications for US births, for names given to at least five babies of a sex in a year (SSA, names.zip, public domain). Ranks follow SSA’s own order: most births first, ties alphabetical. Files retrieved 2026-10-05 (checksum on our sources page).