Salma is an Arabic name that means ‘safe’. It developed from the word ‘salima’ for ‘to be safe’.
Salma is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Salma isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Salma ranks 780. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Salma. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Salma.
Salma is an Arabic name that means ‘safe’. It developed from the word ‘salima’ for ‘to be safe’.
Actress Salma Hayeks Hollywood breakthrough... in the mid-1990s popularized this name in the US.
Salma is a phenomenon of Generation X and Y. Previously, the name wasn't really on the radar of expectant parents. Schoolkids of the early 20th century probably didn't have classmates named Salma - until this very name unexpectedly cried out for attention and peaked in popularity at rank number 533 in 1999. Although it has never reached the top 100 list, this girls' name seems to have been in vogue for a while, which makes Salma really in tune with her generation.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Salma was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
310 babies were named Salma in 2022 - that's 1 in 478,167 newborn girls. With this number, the girls' name Salma ranked 810 in our SmartGenius first name statistics in 2022, the most recent year for which records are available.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter S is a very popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 9.3% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letter A is more common for girls' names.
With five letters, the name Salma is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 9.3% of all girls' names start with an S, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And by the way: Of all the girls' names that start with an S, Susan is the most common.
If your name is Salma and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Salma, you can simply say:
Sun
Apple
Lion
Mouse
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Salma
Salma
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
S
A
L
M
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
S
A
L
M
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Salma sounds like this:
