Meaning not yet researched.
Sela: US girls given the name each year, 1880 to 2025, from Social Security card applications. 29 in 2025. Its best rank was #2,048 in 2000.
US births per year · SSA card applications
Peaked at #2,048 in 2000; #4,738 in 2025. Every baby recorded as Sela in 2025 was a girl.
Baby name · US data 1880–2025
#4,738 for US girls in 2025. Its best year was 2000, at #2,048.
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.
Sela: US girls given the name each year from 1880 to 2025. 29 girls in 2025. Peak: #2,048 in 2000 · most girls in one year: 81 (2000).
In 2025, 29 US girls were named Sela, making it the 4,738th most common girls’ name of the year, down 540 places from #4,198 in 2024. That is 6 fewer than the 35 girls named Sela in 2024. Its best rank for girls was #2,048, reached in 2000. That year also had the most girls given the name: 81. For comparison, it was #4,837 in 2015 and #5,977 in 1950.
Social Security card records list Sela in 43 years of the 146 from 1880 to 2025, starting in 1950 with 5 babies. In all, 1,328 US babies have been given the name, all of them girls. Its busiest decade was the 2000s, with 615 babies named Sela.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 275 US girls were named Sela; the busiest of those years was 2018, with 45. In 2025 that was about 1 in 55,423 of the girls in SSA’s list for the year.
Related spellings in the SSA files include Selah (15,394 babies since 1880), Zella (13,369 babies since 1880), Zyla (2,545 babies since 1880) and Ceola (2,185 babies since 1880).
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.
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 Sela in the open dataset we use.
Source: carltonnorthern/nicknames (Apache-2.0).
Births and national rank for each year SSA lists the name, newest first.
| Year | Girls | Girls rank | Boys | Boys rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 29 | #4,738 | — | — |
| 2024 | 35 | #4,198 | — | — |
| 2023 | 26 | #5,103 | — | — |
| 2022 | 24 | #5,442 | — | — |
| 2021 | 21 | #5,918 | — | — |
| 2020 | 19 | #6,288 | — | — |
| 2019 | 27 | #5,016 | — | — |
| 2018 | 45 | #3,486 | — | — |
| 2017 | 27 | #5,032 | — | — |
| 2016 | 22 | #5,955 | — | — |
| 2015 | 29 | #4,837 | — | — |
| 2014 | 34 | #4,343 | — | — |
| 2013 | 29 | #4,867 | — | — |
| 2012 | 37 | #4,108 | — | — |
| 2011 | 43 | #3,652 | — | — |
| 2010 | 31 | #4,715 | — | — |
| 2009 | 50 | #3,348 | — | — |
| 2008 | 51 | #3,311 | — | — |
| 2007 | 63 | #2,885 | — | — |
| 2006 | 68 | #2,664 | — | — |
| 2005 | 64 | #2,666 | — | — |
| 2004 | 47 | #3,256 | — | — |
| 2003 | 64 | #2,548 | — | — |
| 2002 | 61 | #2,575 | — | — |
| 2001 | 66 | #2,405 | — | — |
| 2000 | 81 | #2,048 | — | — |
| 1999 | 33 | #3,706 | — | — |
| 1998 | 20 | #5,319 | — | — |
| 1997 | 11 | #8,228 | — | — |
| 1996 | 31 | #3,615 | — | — |
| 1995 | 29 | #3,758 | — | — |
| 1994 | 20 | #4,983 | — | — |
| 1993 | 20 | #4,956 | — | — |
| 1992 | 9 | #9,336 | — | — |
| 1991 | 8 | #10,057 | — | — |
| 1990 | 7 | #11,142 | — | — |
| 1987 | 10 | #7,234 | — | — |
| 1986 | 7 | #9,349 | — | — |
| 1979 | 7 | #8,790 | — | — |
| 1977 | 6 | #9,377 | — | — |
| 1957 | 7 | #5,290 | — | — |
| 1954 | 5 | #6,480 | — | — |
| 1950 | 5 | #5,977 | — | — |
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).