Salvador

80,151 people in America carry this name — ranked #661 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it SAL vuh dawr

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

S AE1 L V AH0 D AO2 R — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 80,151 2020 Census
  • Rank #661 Familiar
  • As a surname 13,352 ranked #2,638 the other way round

Where Salvador comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “saviour”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Salvador has been given

47,961 babies were given this name since 1888. The busiest year was 1992, with 928 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90s 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Salvador

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Salvador Robert — runs together
  • Salvador Richard — runs together
  • Salvador Steven — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Never out of use

Salvador has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Boys or girls: who is called Salvador?

99.8% men
145 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Same syllables and stress as Salvador

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 2.2%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 95.5%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.8%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Adult Height

Open Adult Height on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin