Name Awesome

Sonal

Girls' name

Gold

Sonal has been given to 592 babies in the U.S. since 1969. 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 1982, with 33 recorded.

Babies named Sonal, 2012

1 in 610,000

Sonal over time, 1880–2025

Girls
01020304018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Sonal: meaning, origin, and history

Gold

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Sonal means

Sonal means “gold”.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Sonal is used in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 592 girls were recorded with the name Sonal between 1969 and 2012. Its highest annual count was 33 in 1982; its best national rank was #2,735 in 1975.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

How common is Sonal?

Sonal 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 girls only
1 in 293,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2012
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
422,543 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Sonal sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

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.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 422,543 children born in 2012 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Sonal. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Sonals were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Sonal was born before 1984 — so the typical Sonal is around 41 today.

Median birth year
1984
About 41 years old
Biggest decade
1980s
32.4% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
39.7%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
592
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1980s — 32.4% of all recorded uses (192).

Is Sonal 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 1982 (33)
Years since peak
43
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
25.8% average annual change
Best rank ever
#2,735
1975

Spellings of Sonal

Sonal is not the most common spelling — Opal is, with 16.5% against Sonal's 0.13%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Sonal is used

Across 1910–2025, Sonal was most concentrated in California — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 759,826 across all states with data. It was least common in Texas (1 in —).

00 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1California1 in —
  2. 2Illinois1 in —
  3. 3New Jersey1 in —
  4. 4New York1 in —
  5. 5Texas1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Sonal has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Sonal around the world

Where Sonal 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 & Wales
    1996–2007
    #5,201
    in 2007
  • Canada
    1991–2009
    #3,263
    in 2009
  • South Australia
    1973–1973
    #695
    in 1973

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Sonal by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#2,735
1975
Peak year
1982
33 that year
First recorded
1969
Last recorded
2012
All-time count
592
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Sonal

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

SonniSonamSonnySonnieSonnetSoniyaSoniSondaSonomaSonaliSonaSonoraSonnaSonjiManalSondosSonjiaSondiSongSonitaSonyiaSonikaMinalSonie

Sibling names for Sonal

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Sonal

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