Holiday Calendar

National Samantha Day

Next celebratedWednesday, January 6, 2027

Samantha has dropped out of America's top 100 while ranking second among girls born in the Philippines, which makes January 6 a day for a name doing better abroad than at home.

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Last updated September 5, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJanuary 6
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
~2022
“Two of the largest holiday listing sites carry the day not at all. Its earliest archived trace is a page from August 2022.
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The archive starts in 2022, not the mid-2010s.

The earliest archived listing for National Samantha Day is a page from 19 August 2022, and the mid-2010s start date attached to the day elsewhere could not be corroborated against any independent source. No establishing document or named originator has been found.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

96.7% of American Samanthas were born after Bewitched ended

National Samantha Day falls on January 6. It honours a name whose best known origin story does not survive contact with the birth records.

Almost every account credits one sitcom. Bewitched arrived on ABC in 1964, with Elizabeth Montgomery as a suburban witch who cast her spells by twitching her nose.

The jump in the data is real. American parents registered seventy one girls named Samantha in 1963. Two years later the figure was 1,961.

What does not hold is the credit. Federal name records list 592,847 American Samanthas in all. Fully 96.7% of them arrived after the show had already ended.

The name has since travelled most of the way home. Its most recent annual count is 1,973, against 1,961 in the year after the premiere.

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ORIGINS

Samantha Day history

INTRODUCTION

For most of its recorded life Samantha barely registered. The federal name file opens in 1880. It records twenty one American girls given the name that year, and for the next seventy years the annual count rarely cleared forty.

So the question the record answers is not why the name rose. It is why it rose so long after the thing that is supposed to have caused it.

CHAPTER 01

A name without a settled parent

The reference works will not pin the etymology down. Behind the Name offers only that Samantha was "perhaps intended to be a feminine form of Samuel", using a suffix "possibly inspired by" the Greek word for flower. The entry files the name under uncertain etymology and dates its origin to 18th century America.

CHAPTER 02

One year the line bent

Whatever the sitcom did, it did fast. The rise that followed the premiere is the sharpest two year move anywhere in the file. Set those years aside and nothing else in 146 years reaches fourfold.

The show had the reach to explain it. The Museum of Broadcast Communications records that Bewitched was "the highest rated of all the new series" in its first season, and that it stayed in the Nielsen top twelve for five seasons.

Then it stopped. Across the following decade the annual count never left a narrow band. The programme ran eight seasons and the name grew through none of them.

CHAPTER 03

The boom arrived without the show

Samantha did not reach the American top one hundred until 1976, four years after the finale. The peak came in 1990. American parents gave the name to 25,868 girls that year, more than thirteen times the level of the mid sixties.

CHAPTER 04

A day without a signature

The observance carries none of this documentation. Its earliest archived listing is a page captured on 19 August 2022, and two of the largest holiday listing sites do not carry it at all. A name with a century and a half of federal statistics behind it ended up with a day that leaves almost no trace of its own.

TIMELINE

Timeline

The federal record opens

The Social Security Administration's national name file begins. It lists twenty one American girls named Samantha in that first year.

Bewitched reaches ABC

The sitcom puts a witch named Samantha in a Connecticut suburb. American parents give the name to 415 girls that year.

The show ends

Bewitched closes after eight seasons. Samantha is ranked 137th among American girls' names.

A first top 100 finish

Samantha enters the American top one hundred for the first time, at 85th. The series had finished four years earlier.

The peak year

American parents name 25,868 girls Samantha, the highest annual figure anywhere in the record.

The day leaves its first trace

The earliest archived web page for National Samantha Day is captured on 19 August 2022.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Samantha Day

Statute

One Samantha day is law. It is not this one.

Maine's statute books designate the first Monday in June as Samantha Smith Day, in memory of the schoolgirl who wrote to Soviet leader Yury Andropov in 1982 about her fear of nuclear war. The law obliges the governor to proclaim it every year, which makes it the one Samantha observance in the United States carrying legal force.

Command

The name reached the space station

Samantha Cristoforetti became the first European woman to command the International Space Station, taking the role at a handover ceremony held on 28 September 2022. She had been leading the American segment of the station since her Minerva mission began that April.

Retreat

Samantha is well past its peak

Samantha was the third most popular girls' name in America in 1998, and the fifth most common of the whole 1990s. It has since dropped out of the top hundred altogether, which makes January 6 a day for a name in retreat rather than one on the rise.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Samantha Day by the Numbers

64.1
Samantha births a year, 1954 to 1963
1,793
Fewest Samantha births, 1965 to 1974
2,422
Most Samantha births, 1965 to 1974
19
Straight years Samantha held the top 10
151st
US rank for Samantha in 2025

GOOD TO KNOW

National Samantha Day Around the World

Philippines

the second most popular girls' name in 2024, the most recent year on record

Mexico

ranked 19th in 2021, far above its standing in the United States

England and Wales

missing from the top 100 in 1964, ninth by 1974, and gone again by 2004

Chile

ranked 27th in 2021, part of a strong showing across Spanish speaking Latin America

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Samantha Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up her birth year

The Social Security Administration publishes its national name file one year at a time, back to 1880. Find a Samantha's birth year in it and you can see exactly how many others were given the name alongside her.

WATCH

Watch the show that takes the credit

Bewitched ran eight seasons on ABC, opening in 1964 with Elizabeth Montgomery twitching her nose in a Connecticut suburb. Watch an episode and decide how much of a naming boom you think a sitcom can carry.

READ

Read up on Samantha Smith

At ten years old she wrote to the leader of the Soviet Union about nuclear war, and got an invitation back. Her visit in July 1983 took in Moscow, Leningrad and a children's camp on the Black Sea.

SET

Set the British data beside the American

The Office for National Statistics publishes name rankings for England and Wales every tenth year, starting in 1904. Line those snapshots up against the American series and you can watch the same rise and fall arrive on a different schedule.

LEARN

Learn the other Samantha day

Maine observes Samantha Smith Day on the first Monday in June, under a statute on its books since 1987. Knowing that settles the question when someone means a different Samantha day entirely.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Samantha Day?

1 / 8

What share of American Samanthas were born after Bewitched went off the air?

Answer

No. It carries no federal proclamation, no state statute and no sponsoring body, and it is not a day off work.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

10sources
6primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
Social Security Administration2026
National data on the relative frequency of given names in the population of U.S. births
Year by year counts of every US given name from 1880 to 2025.
View source
Social Security Administration
Top names of the 1990s
Decade rankings placing Samantha fifth among 1990s girls' names.
View source
Office for National Statistics31 July 2025
Top 100 baby names in England and Wales: 1904 to 2024
British name rankings at ten year intervals, drawn from birth registrations.
View source
Maine State Legislature
Maine Revised Statutes Title 1, Section 126: Samantha Smith Day
The statute setting Samantha Smith Day on the first Monday in June.
View source
Office of Governor Janet T. Mills2025
Samantha Smith Day, June 1
A recent Maine proclamation issued under that statute.
View source
European Space AgencySeptember 2022
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti becomes first European female ISS commander
ESA's announcement of the September 2022 command handover.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Samantha
The name's hedged etymology plus its ranking in nineteen countries.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Bewitched
The sitcom's ABC run, its cast and its Connecticut setting.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Samantha Smith
Smith's 1982 letter to Yury Andropov and her Soviet visit.
View source
Television Academy1997
Bewitched, Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television
Ratings history showing the show topped its first season's new series.
View source
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