Nasir
- Pronunciation
- [Na-sir]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Protector
- Origin
- Arabic
About the Name Nasir
Nasir descends from the Arabic Nāṣir meaning "protector," "defender," or "helper" — and is one of the names of God in Islam (al-Naṣīr, "the Helper/Protector"). The name has been used continuously in Muslim naming traditions for over a millennium.
Notable bearers include American basketball player Nasir Little (born 2000, the Phoenix Suns NBA player); American rapper Nas (Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, born 1973, the iconic American hip-hop artist whose 1994 debut album Illmatic is widely considered one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time); contemporary Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (using the related Nasser spelling, 1918–1970); and the contemporary American football player Nasir Adderley.
Nasir's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2000 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name has been driven primarily by Muslim-American and African-American naming. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Arabic-Islamic-religious pedigree, the in-built distinctive protector/helper register, and the popular two-syllable -ir ending. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to Arabic-derived naming. The name reads as both classical-Islamic and contemporary American with the strong Nas hip-hop cultural anchor. Common nicknames Nas (the dominant warm short form, casual and warm) and the rare Nasi each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Nasir, Naseer, Nazir, and Naser have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Nāṣir (Arabic original), Nasser (alternate Arabic spelling), Nazir (Persian alternate), and the original Arabic Nāṣir.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Nasir
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Nasir by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2019 with 928 boys named Nasir (boy rank #355 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #487 for boys (617 US births). That's 132 places below its 2019 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Nasir Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Nasir the strongest states are District of Columbia, Maryland, Georgia.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | #92 | 121 |
| 2 | Maryland | #162 | 382 |
| 3 | Georgia | #200 | 579 |
| 4 | Delaware | #215 | 21 |
| 5 | Virginia | #232 | 368 |
| 6 | South Carolina | #252 | 207 |
| 7 | Illinois | #260 | 452 |
| 8 | North Carolina | #262 | 426 |
| 9 | Michigan | #285 | 320 |
| 10 | New York | #298 | 593 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | #752 | 67 |
| 2 | Colorado | #713 | 29 |
| 3 | Arizona | #702 | 85 |
| 4 | Oklahoma | #697 | 29 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #660 | 94 |
| 6 | Texas | #651 | 408 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #648 | 70 |
| 8 | California | #631 | 432 |
| 9 | Kentucky | #557 | 61 |
| 10 | Arkansas | #506 | 33 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Nasir in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Nasir?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Nasir to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Nasir against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).