Anwar

Where Anwar comes from

Borrowed from Arabic أَنْوَر (ʔanwar, “most luminous”).
— Wiktionary's entry for Anwar
  • Arabic
Along the way
  1. 1918
    Anwar Sadat born
    President of Egypt from 1970 to 1981
  2. 1947
    Anwar Ibrahim born
    Prime Minister of Malaysia since 2022
  3. 1969
    First appearance
    #3,935 among boys, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  4. 1978
    Peak, #697
    144 babies named Anwar — more than any year before or since.
  5. 1980
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #1,166.
In the dictionary
  • A male given name from Arabic.
  • A female given name from Arabic.
Namesakes
  • Anwar Sadat · President of Egypt from 1970 to 1981, 1918–1981
  • Anwar Ibrahim · Prime Minister of Malaysia since 2022, born 1947
  • Anwar al-Awlaki · American-Yemeni imam and suspected Islamist extremist, 1971–2011
  • Anwar El Ghazi · Dutch association football player, born 1995
  • Anwar Mesbah · Egyptian weightlifter, 1913–1998

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.