Humanverse

Dana vs Daniela

American parents have registered 246,842 Danas since 1880, against 68,682 Danielas. But in 2025 it was Daniela that was commoner, 1,009 babies to 269.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dana against Daniela, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dana Daniela

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, Dana for 118 years and Daniela for 28 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Dana Daniela
Total US births 246,84268,682
Most in one year 8,0323,084
Babies in 2025 2691,009
Estimated living today 215,00068,000
Median age today 5219
Peak year 19712007
Best rank 44th girls108th girls
Rank in 2025 1,027th302nd
First recorded 18801947
Girls / boys 193,555 / 53,28768,514 / 168

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 Danas alive today are over 52; half the Danielas are over 19. That is 33 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 Dana Daniela
Italy 4988,477
France 2,5052,895
England and Wales 1,8631,540
Switzerland 639715
Poland 85868
Norway 193687
Belgium 406273
Scotland 526138
Ireland 142197
Northern Ireland 136

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: Dana and Daniela.