girl's name
Selah
SEE-luh
- Origin Hebrew
- Gender Girl
- Letters 5
- Popularity Top 1000 (US)
- Births on record 16,085
the United States
#216
2025 births
Selah is a girl's name of Hebrew origin whose meaning is genuinely unknown. It appears seventy-four times in the Psalms as a word whose sense was already lost by the time the Bible was translated into Greek, and the common glosses of pause or praise are educated guesses.
- Selah is a name of Hebrew origin.
- Peaked in 2025, when 1,429 babies were given the name.
- It has been rising over the past decade.
- Today about 1 in 2,320 babies in the United States is given this name.
- First appears in US birth records in 1962.
Selah over time
Births per decade in the United States, 1960s to 2020s. The striped bar is the 2020s, still in progress — it covers 2020 to 2025, not a full ten years.
Show the numbers
| Decade | Births |
|---|---|
| 1960s | 11 |
| 1970s | 55 |
| 1980s | 104 |
| 1990s | 359 |
| 2000s | 2,530 |
| 2010s | 6,247 |
| 2020s (to 2025) | 6,088 |
What Selah means
Selah is usually explained as a pause, a musical rest, or a call to lift up and praise. None of these is established. It is one of the few biblical words whose meaning was uncertain to ancient translators as well as to modern ones.
Where Selah comes from
Selah punctuates the Psalms and appears three times in Habakkuk, always at a break in the text, which is why the leading theory reads it as a musical or liturgical direction — a pause, an interlude, or an instruction to raise the voices. The Greek Septuagint rendered it as diapsalma, itself obscure, showing the sense was already gone more than two thousand years ago. A rival derivation connects it to salal, to lift up, and a separate Hebrew word sela means rock or cliff and names a city in Edom, which is where the boulder reading in some sources comes from. As a given name it is modern and largely American.
Selah in use
Selah charts in only four of the seven countries we track, and reached its highest recorded use in 2025.
How popular is Selah?
In 2025, Selah was given to 1,429 babies in the United States, ranking #216 that year. It is a well-established, commonly used name.
Where Selah is used
US figures omit any name given to fewer than five babies in a year, so the rarest names are absent from the source rather than absent from use. Data & sources.
How Selah is spelled
Birth registers count each spelling separately, so every one has its own ranking.
| Spelling | What it is | Births on record |
|---|---|---|
| Sélah | Sélah is a rare spelling of Selah, written with an acute accent and recorded about 5 times, mostly in France. | 5 |
Names that peaked alongside Selah
These names rose and fell in the same era, which is why they tend to sound like they belong together.
Parents who like Selah also like
Names whose popularity has risen and fallen in step with Selah over the last century — the same taste, a different name.
1 nickname for Selah
Each one is a name in its own right — the figure underneath is how it is doing today, so you can see which short forms are rising and which have faded.
Selah in other languages
The same name as it is spelled elsewhere — not shortenings, and not different names that merely sound alike. Each one has its own record here.
- Other forms
- Forms we hold no single language for — some are used across several, some are simply spelled differently.
- Sela
Sibling names for Selah
Names from the same era that won't rhyme or share an initial with Selah — the two things that make a sibling set grate.
Common questions about Selah
What does the name Selah mean?
Nobody knows. It is usually explained as a pause or a call to praise, but the sense was already lost when the Psalms were translated into Greek.
What does Selah mean in the Bible?
It appears seventy-four times in the Psalms, always at a break, which is why most scholars read it as a musical or liturgical direction rather than a word with a lexical meaning.
How do you pronounce Selah?
SEE-luh is the most common English pronunciation, though SEH-lah is also used.
How popular is the name Selah?
In 2025, Selah was given to 1,429 babies in the United States, ranking #216 that year. It is a well-established, commonly used name.
Is Selah a girl's or a boy's name?
Selah is given almost entirely to girls in birth records.
When was Selah most popular?
Selah peaked in 2025, when 1,429 babies were given the name. It has been rising over the past decade.
What are the nicknames for Selah?
Selah is usually shortened to Lala.
Is Selah a good name?
That is not something records can settle, but they can tell you what you would be choosing. Selah currently ranks #216 in the United States. It has been rising over the past decade. Everything else — how it sounds with your surname, who it reminds you of — is yours.