Is October 25 a traditional name day for Yasmin?

No. Behind the Name indexes the name-day calendars of 21 countries, which arose mainly from saints' feast days, and Yasmin appears in none of them.

Who started National Yasmin Day?

Listings for the day go back at least to October 2022, when the earliest one was archived. None of them names a founder, and no proclamation, first observance or establishing document has been traced.

Does the name Yasmin mean jasmine?

Yes. Behind the Name gives the meaning as jasmine in Arabic and Hebrew, from Persian yasamin, and the English flower word descends from the same root by way of Arabic and French.

National Yasmin Day

Next celebratedSunday, October 25, 2026

Everyone named Yasmin now has a date to mark, which the saints' calendars never gave them: not one of Europe's 21 traditional name-day lists carries the name.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEOctober 25

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A name with a long record and a day with none.

No founder, first observance or establishing record has been identified for National Yasmin Day, which circulates on holiday-listing sites without an author. The name it marks is far better documented, in newspaper archives and in two national birth registers.

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

INTRO

Sixty-nine blank years in the American birth record

The United States has counted baby names since 1880. For the first sixty-nine years of that count, Yasmin does not appear at all. National Yasmin Day belongs to a name that America, on paper, did not use.

Then five girls were registered with it in 1949. Five is not a round number. It is the smallest count the Social Security Administration will publish, so 1949 is simply the first year the name was visible at all.

Nobody has claimed the day itself. There is no founder on record, no first observance, no proclamation. For a name with this much paper behind it, that is a strange silence.

ORIGINS

Yasmin Day history

INTRODUCTION

English has had this name for four and a half centuries. It arrived in the 1570s as a plant, borrowed from French jasmin, which had it from Arabic, which had it from Persian yasamin. The climbing shrub was growing in English gardens before that century was out.

Behind the Name records that the Persian root is also a Persian name. English took the flower and left the person behind, and it stayed that way for close to four centuries.

CHAPTER 01

Valentino's dancing girl

In 1926 the name reached American readers through a hit film. Vilma Bánky played a dancing girl called Yasmin opposite Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik, released nationwide on 5 September, nearly two weeks after Valentino died.

Californian newspapers printed the name 26 times that year, almost all of it film coverage. Not one American baby was recorded with it. It was in the papers and out of the register at the same time.

CHAPTER 02

Four days in December 1949

Then it went quiet. Across the whole of the 1940s, the California Digital Newspaper Collection holds no instance of the word Yasmin, while returning thousands for jasmine and for Hayworth in the same years.

On 28 December 1949 a daughter was born to Rita Hayworth and Prince Aly Khan at a clinic in Lausanne. The San Pedro News Pilot ran the news that day under the headline "Princess Will Be Named Yasmin". The Tulare Advance Register followed on the 29th with a smaller argument: "Yasimin, Yasmin? Prince Aly and Grandpa Disagree".

Every 1949 press mention of the name falls on or after that date. Whatever the birth record owes to those four days, it cannot owe them the year itself. The girls counted in 1949 were named before the papers ran a word.

What followed is not in doubt. The name turns up 1,022 times in the 1950s.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no author

National Yasmin Day has nothing like that paper trail. The earliest archived listing of it was captured in October 2022, so it has been circulating at least that long. No founder, first observance or establishing document has been identified, and a search of the Federal Register returns nothing for it.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Yasmin Day Matters

REGISTERS

82nd in England and Wales, 443rd in America, the same year

In 1996 England and Wales registered 661 girls named Yasmin against 572 in the United States, and the same thing happened in 1997. On the 1996 lists the name stood 82nd in England and Wales and 443rd in America.

SPELLING

The borrowed spelling outnumbers the original

American parents have given 258,626 girls the name Jasmine since 1880, and 21,747 the name Yasmin. The spelling that came through French is close to twelve times commoner there than the Arabic-influenced one.

EVIDENCE

The Disney story does not survive the files

Jasmine roughly tripled among American girls between 1987 and 1991, before Aladdin opened in November 1992. Its 1993 peak sits under five percent above that pre-film level, and 1992 itself was a down year.

TIMELINE

Timeline

English borrows the word

Jasmine enters English from French, which took it from Arabic, which took it from Persian, as the name of a climbing plant.

A dancing girl in a hit film

Vilma Bánky plays Yasmin opposite Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik, and Californian papers print the name 26 times that year.

Two arrivals in one December

Yasmin Aga Khan is born in Lausanne on 28 December, and 1949 is also the first year the name reaches a United States birth-name file.

Britain's high-water mark

England and Wales register 628 girls named Yasmin, the 81st most common girls' name that year.

America peaks nine years later

American parents choose Yasmin 1,018 times, the highest annual figure anywhere in the record.

Both registers well past their peak

England and Wales register 137 girls named Yasmin and the United States records 269.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Yasmin Day Around the World

Portugal

275 girls were registered as Yasmin in 2018, when it stood 38th among Portuguese girls, ahead of its rank in Spain, Italy or the Netherlands

Kazakhstan

320 girls in 2025, 95th on the national list, which renders the name as Ясмин

Spain

81st among Spanish girls in 2024, given to just over two in every thousand

Basque Country, Spain

68th on the regional list in 2024, on a count of 16 girls

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Yasmin Day

Look the name up in the national registers

The Social Security Administration publishes every American given name with at least five births in a year, back to 1880. The Office for National Statistics does the same for England and Wales, and both files are free to download.

READ

Read the newspapers from December 1949

The California Digital Newspaper Collection holds the coverage that first put the name into American print. Search it for the last four days of that year and the headlines come up in order.

TRACE

Trace the word back through three languages

English took jasmine from French, French from Arabic, and Arabic from Persian. The Online Etymology Dictionary lays the whole chain out in one entry.

ASK

Ask a Yasmin which spelling she was given

Yasmin, Yasmine, Yasmeen, Yazmin and Yasmina are counted separately, and neither the American nor the British register merges them. The letters on the certificate are their own fact.

PLANT

Plant the thing the name means

Jasmine is a climbing plant with fragrant flowers, grown for perfume long before anyone was named after it. A cutting on a fence is the most literal way to mark the day.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Yasmin Day?

1 / 8

In which year does Yasmin first appear in United States birth-name records?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance and a normal working day; the United States Federal Register carries no document naming it, and neither does the UK Parliament's Hansard record.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

20sources

9primary records

4independently dated

Primary records

Social Security Administration2026

Every US given name with at least five births in a year, 1880 to 2025.