Mohammad and Avigail are the most popular baby names in Israel, but the real story is who's in second
As Israel counts down to the Jewish New Year, the Population Authority's name list shows just how much a year of war can shape what parents call their kids
There's a small, strange ritual Israel does every year right before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year: the Population and Immigration Authority opens up its books and tells the country what everyone named their babies. It's part bureaucracy, part cultural snapshot, and this year it's also a bit of a time capsule for a country that just lived through Operation Rising Lion, Israel's 12-day military campaign against Iran in June 2025, a hostage return, and a war that's still working its way into the national vocabulary, one nursery at a time.
The headline numbers barely moved. Mohammad is still the single most common name given to any baby born in Israel this Hebrew year, 5786, with 1,670 newborns carrying it. Avigail is still on top for girls, with 1,129. Neither is a surprise. Mohammad has topped the overall boys' list for years running, and Avigail has been Israel's reigning girls' name for what's starting to feel like forever.
You might be wondering why Mohammad wins nationally, even though Israel is a majority Jewish country. It simply comes down to concentration, not spread. Israel's Arab-Muslim community numbers around 1.7 million people, roughly 18 percent of the population, and naming a son after the Prophet Muhammad is a deep-rooted tradition within it.
Jewish parents, by contrast, spread their choices across dozens of biblical and modern Hebrew names, none of which gets anywhere close to a similar share. So one name concentrated heavily in one community can outrank any single name drawn from a much more fragmented pool, and Mohammad ends up on top of the national registry almost every year.
But look one layer down, and the list gets a lot more interesting.
Top 10 Israeli Girl Names, Jewish Year 5786 (2025-2026)
Avigail (1,129)
Miriam/Mariam (986)
Lia (935)
Libi (918)
Tamar (862)
Yael (756)
Ayalah (729)
Sarah (725)
Ella (702)
Naya (635)
Top 10 Israeli Boy Names, Jewish Year 5786 (2025-2026)
Mohammad (1,670)
Ariel (1,283)
Yosef/Yousef (1,278)
Adam (1,197)
David (1,011)
Omer (910)
Rafael (846)
Lavi (812)
Michael (789)
Eitan (753)
The comeback: Ariel reclaims the throne
Twelve months ago, something unusual happened. Lavi shot to the top of the Jewish boys' list, unseating Ariel, who had held the number one spot for years. The reason wasn't subtle: Rising Lion had "Am Kelavi," an ancient biblical phrase meaning "a people like a lion," running through the national conversation all year, and it showed up in delivery rooms across the country.
That surge didn't last. This year Ariel is back on top among Jewish boys, followed by David, Rafael, and Lavi, which slipped to fourth. It's the kind of thing that only really shows up when you're tracking names year over year: a single military operation can bend a naming trend for exactly one cycle before things snap back.
Avigail's quiet dynasty
If Ariel's story is a comeback, Avigail's is a dynasty. The name traces back to the Hebrew Bible, where Avigail was King David's wife, remembered for her sharp thinking and diplomacy, and it translates roughly to "my father's joy," which probably doesn't hurt its staying power.
It topped the girls' list again this year, both nationally and among Jewish families specifically, continuing a streak that now stretches back multiple Hebrew years. Behind it: Miriam, Lia, Libi, Tamar, Yael, Ayalah, Sarah, Ella and Naya rounding out the general top ten. Among Jewish girls specifically, Libi, which means ‘my heart’ in Hebrew, jumps up to second place, right behind Avigail.
Nothing about the girls' list screams "war year" the way Lavi did. It's mostly biblical names and modern Hebrew classics doing what they always do, holding steady while everyone speculates about what will finally knock Avigail off the top.
179,398 new Israelis
Zoom out, and the numbers get bigger. Since last Rosh Hashanah, 179,398 babies were registered in Israel's population registry. Jerusalem led every city by a wide margin, with 23,336 births, more than Bnei Brak (8,225) and Tel Aviv (7,405) combined.
Beit Shemesh, Ashdod, Haifa, Rishon LeZion, Netanya, Petah Tikva and Modi'in Illit all cracked the 3,000 mark too, a reminder that Israel's baby boom isn't confined to any one city or community.
Zooming out further: why Israel keeps having babies when nobody else does
Here's where it gets genuinely wild by international standards. Israel isn't just having a lot of babies this year; it's having more of them than it did last year, and more than it's had in decades.
New Central Bureau of Statistics figures show 66,753 babies were born to Jewish mothers in just the first half of 2026, up 2.6 percent from the same stretch in 2025. Zoom out to the full 12 months ending in June, and 137,343 Jewish babies were born, the highest annual figure on record going back to 1996.
Across the whole population, Jewish and Arab combined, 185,344 babies arrived in that same 12-month stretch, edging out the previous high from 2021.
That's a real reversal. Israeli births had actually been sliding since the pre-pandemic boom, dropping from a record 184,370 in 2018 down to 177,307 in 2020, with the national fertility rate slipping from 3.01 children per woman to 2.9 over the same stretch. But even at that dip, Israel was still miles ahead of every other wealthy country on earth. Now it's climbing again.
The demographic story underneath all this has actually flipped over the past two decades. Back in the early 2000s, Arab fertility in Israel sat around 4.3 children per woman, more than a full child above the Jewish rate of roughly 2.6. That gap has now closed and reversed entirely.
In 2024, Jewish women averaged 3.07 children compared to 2.59 among Arab women, and the newest monthly data suggests that gap may be widening further: Jewish births rose 2.6 percent in the first half of 2026 while Arab births grew barely half a percent.
Israel's Arab population is still growing faster in raw terms, simply because it skews younger with more people entering their childbearing years, but the fertility trend itself has clearly shifted.
But put Israel next to the rest of the developed world, and the picture gets almost surreal. Most OECD countries, the club of wealthy democracies, are sitting well below the 2.1 children per woman needed just to keep a population steady without immigration. Israel's overall fertility rate was 2.87 in 2024, and 3.07 among Jewish women specifically.
Israel is quite simply the only OECD country that has consistently stayed above replacement level in recent years, at a moment when governments from Seoul to Rome are throwing money at the problem and watching birth rates keep sliding anyway.
So this Jewish New Year, somewhere between the Ariels reclaiming their throne and the record number of new Jerusalemites, there's a bigger story: in a world where most rich countries are shrinking, Israel keeps growing, war and all.