The names Salima and Salimah popped up for the first time in the U.S. baby name data in 1969:
| Girls named Salima | Girls named Salimah | |
| 1971 | 7 | . |
| 1970 | 5 | . |
| 1969 | 6* | 5* |
| 1968 | . | . |
| 1967 | . | . |
The masculine form of the name, Salim (also spelled Saleem), had emerged in the data earlier in the ’60s. But this doesn’t account for the sudden appearance of both Salima and Salimah.
What does?
A royal wedding!
In October of 1969, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV — the Imam of the Nizari branch of Ismaili Muslims — married British divorcée and former fashion model Lady Sarah Crichton-Stuart. (She’d been born in British India in 1940 as Sarah “Sally” Croker Poole.)
With her second marriage — and conversion to Islam — came another name change: Salimah Aga Khan. (She continued to go by the nickname Sally, though.)
Some news outlets misspelled the new name “Salima,” which is likely why this version also debuted in 1969.
The Muslim names Salim and Salimah derive from the Arabic root s-l-m, meaning “to be safe, secure.”
Do you like the name Salimah?
Sources:
- Salimah Aga Khan – Wikipedia
- Vinocur, John. “Aga Khan to be married Tuesday in Moslem Rites.” Santa Cruz Sentinel 26 Oct. 1969: 20.
- Wiktionary
P.S. Several decades earlier, the Aga Khan’s younger half-sister, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, also had a slight influence on U.S. baby names…
I like the name Salimah a lot. A friend from college is named Salimah. She was born in 1972 in the U.S. She’s Black Muslim, and her sisters also have Arabic names: Yara, Maryam, and Nadira.