Humanverse

Dan vs Danielle

American parents have registered 373,698 Danielles since 1880, against 107,130 Dans. Danielle is still ahead, with 550 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dan against Danielle, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dan Danielle

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Dan for 87 years and Danielle for 59 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Dan Danielle
Total US births 107,130373,698
Most in one year 3,70217,086
Babies in 2025 88550
Estimated living today 59,000361,000
Median age today 6537
Peak year 19601987
Best rank 111th boys14th girls
Rank in 2025 1,959th549th
First recorded 18801937
Girls / boys 576 / 106,554371,803 / 1,895

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Dans alive today are over 65; half the Danielles are over 37. That is 28 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Dan Danielle
France 4,835158,090
England and Wales 87813,528
Scotland 536,052
Ireland 4954,193
Northern Ireland 113463
Belgium 15670
Poland 3016

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Dan and Danielle.