Imani is the Swahili word for "faith" — borrowed originally from the Arabic īmān (إيمان), which means the same. As a given name it became prominent in the United States through the Kwanzaa observance: Imani is the seventh principle of Kwanzaa, falling on January 1, and represents faith in the community, in family, and in the future.
The name has been used in African-American families since the late twentieth century and now appears widely in Africa as well, particularly in East Africa. It has the rare quality of being both a religious word in Arabic and a secular cultural value in Swahili — the same meaning, lived two different ways.
Three syllables, one beautiful idea.
Imani does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Imani reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.