The Baby Names That Are Far More Common in Minnesota Than Anywhere Else
Mahir is the most distinctively Minnesota name in America, given to boys there nearly 35 times more often than the national rate. Isra, Ayman, Marwa, and Sidra follow close behind, alongside Henrik, Greta, and Imran. Minnesota’s most unusual names come from two traditions at once — East African and Scandinavian — and the two are moving in opposite directions.
| Name | Sex | Minnesota lift | MN births | US births | Expected at national rate | MN's share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mahir | M | 34.9x | 209 | 363 | 6 | 57.6% |
| Isra | F | 16.3x | 114 | 423 | 7 | 27.0% |
| Ayman | M | 15.9x | 158 | 604 | 10 | 26.2% |
| Marwa | F | 13.7x | 82 | 364 | 6 | 22.5% |
| Sidra | F | 13.0x | 86 | 401 | 7 | 21.4% |
| Asma | F | 12.9x | 71 | 334 | 6 | 21.3% |
| Safa | F | 11.7x | 132 | 684 | 11 | 19.3% |
| Henrik | M | 10.9x | 163 | 906 | 15 | 18.0% |
| Imran | M | 10.9x | 165 | 922 | 15 | 17.9% |
| Crosby | M | 10.0x | 117 | 709 | 12 | 16.5% |
| Greta | F | 9.9x | 209 | 1,278 | 21 | 16.4% |
| Zakaria | M | 9.8x | 60 | 372 | 6 | 16.1% |
What does it mean for a name to be “distinctively Minnesota”?
It means concentration, not popularity. We compared each name’s share of Minnesota births from 2021 through 2025 against its share of births nationwide, then ranked the gap. A lift of 10× means the name turns up ten times more often in Minnesota than in the country at large. Names needed at least 60 Minnesota births and 300 nationally to qualify.
Mahir is the most extreme result in this dataset outside New York and New Jersey. Of the 363 American boys given the name over five years, 209 were born in Minnesota — a state responsible for 1.65% of US births. Nearly six in ten Mahirs in America are Minnesotan.
Which baby names are most distinctive to Minnesota?
Mahir leads at 34.9 times the national rate, with 209 Minnesota boys against an expected six. Isra (16.3×), Ayman (15.9×), Marwa (13.7×), Sidra (13.0×), and Asma (12.9×) fill out the top six. Every name in Minnesota’s top twelve draws at least 16% of its nationwide total from a single state.
The list splits cleanly in two. Most of the top names are Arabic and Somali: Mahir, Isra, Ayman, Marwa, Sidra, Asma, Safa, Imran, Zakaria, Mohamed, Adnan, Asiya, Yasir, Ilyas, Bilal. The rest are Scandinavian: Henrik, Greta, Ingrid, Anders, Soren, Lars, and a long tail of vintage names like Harriet, Luella, and Etta.
Crosby sits at 10.0× and fits neither category. It’s both a Minnesota town and a hockey surname in a state that calls itself the State of Hockey, and the data can’t tell you which one parents had in mind.
Why does Minnesota have two naming traditions?
Minnesota is home to roughly 107,000 people of Somali descent, the largest Somali population in the United States, concentrated in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro. It is also a state where Norwegian ancestry runs to about 662,000 people, the legacy of 19th-century Scandinavian settlement across the Upper Midwest.
Those two histories produce two naming vocabularies, and they show up side by side in the birth records. What’s unusual isn’t that Minnesota has both — plenty of states have layered immigration. It’s that both traditions are strong enough to dominate a national distinctiveness ranking at the same time.
Which Minnesota names are rising and which are fading?
The two traditions are moving in opposite directions. Mahir has climbed from 7 Minnesota boys in 2015 to 54 in 2025. Ayman has gone from fewer than five to 43 over the same period. Meanwhile Henrik has fallen from a peak of 51 in 2018 to 26, and Greta from 75 to 40.
| Name | 2015 | 2018 | 2021 | 2025 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mahir (M) | 7 | 24 | 31 | 54 | Rising sharply |
| Ayman (M) | (under 5) | 19 | 24 | 43 | Rising sharply |
| Mohamed (M) | 82 | 89 | 85 | 69 | Slipping |
| Anders (M) | 30 | 29 | 21 | 24 | Drifting down |
| Ingrid (F) | 21 | 28 | 27 | 17 | Declining |
| Greta (F) | 66 | 75 | 49 | 40 | Declining |
| Henrik (M) | 45 | 51 | 34 | 26 | Falling |
The Scandinavian revival that gave Minnesota Henrik, Greta, and Ingrid appears to have peaked around 2018. Every one of those names is down by a third or more since. The East African names are the ones still climbing.
Are Minnesota’s most popular names also its most unusual?
No. From 2021 to 2025, Minnesota’s most common names were Henry, Oliver, Theodore, Liam, Charlotte, Noah, Evelyn, and Jack — essentially the national top ten in a slightly different order. Minnesota’s distinctiveness lives well below that tier, among names given to a hundred or two hundred children over five years.
Which is the pattern in every state we’ve looked at. Popularity rankings converge; rates diverge. If you want to know what makes a place different, you have to stop counting and start comparing.
How does Minnesota compare to other states?
Minnesota has seven names above 8× lift, behind only New York and New Jersey, where Hasidic naming traditions produce the most extreme concentrations in the country. Utah has six, Louisiana three, and most states have none at all.
What sets Minnesota apart is the single-name peak. Mahir at 34.9× is higher than anything in Utah or Louisiana, and higher than all but a handful of names nationally. Tennessee, by comparison, tops out around 4×, and Maine’s most distinctive names barely clear 3×.
Where does this data come from?
The figures come from the Social Security Administration’s state-level baby name files, which record every name given to at least five babies of one sex in a state in a given year, drawn from Social Security card applications. The records run from 1910 through 2025. We analyzed 2021 through 2025 and required at least 60 state births and 300 national births for a name to qualify.
Population figures come from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Two caveats on the name data: names given to fewer than five babies in a state-year are suppressed, which is why Ayman shows no 2015 count. And the files record where a baby was born, not where the family lives now.
Sources: Social Security Administration — Baby Names by State · US Census Bureau — American Community Survey
Analysis covers births 2021–2025. Published September 2026.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only. Information and conditions are subject to change. Verify current details directly with the relevant source before making any decisions.
