Amiri comes from the Arabic amir and means "prince" or "commander"; in Swahili the same word is used, and Amiri also appears as an Arabic surname, "of the prince". The poet and playwright Amiri Baraka made it an African-American given name in the 1960s. Amiri was rare for decades, then surged in the 2020s: it entered the US top 1000 in 2021, peaked at number 506 in 2023 and ranks number 604 in 2025.