Ishmail
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Ishmail has been given to 208 babies in the U.S. since 1971. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1995, with 13 recorded.
Babies named Ishmail, 2012
1 in 610,000
Ishmail over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Ishmail?
Ishmail had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2012, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 2012
- 1 in 610,000
- 6 of 3,657,590 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 316,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 2012
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 422,543 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Ishmail sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2012 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 422,543 children born in 2012 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Ishmail. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Ishmails were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Ishmail was born before 1998 — so the typical Ishmail is around 27 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1990s
- 45.2% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 89.9%
- A modern name
- Recorded since 1950
- 208
- People you could plausibly meet
1990s — 45.2% of all recorded uses (94).
Is Ishmail rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 1995 (13)
- Years since peak
- 30
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Shifting
- 24.6% average annual change
Spellings of Ishmail
Ishmail is not the most common spelling — Ismael is, with 80.0% against Ishmail's 0.38%.
Ishmail around the world
Where Ishmail ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.
- England & Wales1996–2020#4,608in 2020
Popularity data from Office for National Statistics. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0.
Ishmail by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Ishmail
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Ishmail
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.