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Danelle vs Daniel

American parents have registered 1,991,091 Daniels since 1880, against 7,155 Danelles. Daniel is still ahead, with 8,093 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Danelle against Daniel, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Danelle Daniel

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

Daniel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1974, when Danelle had 265 and Daniel had 23,986.

Side by side

  Danelle Daniel
Total US births 7,1551,991,091
Most in one year 26538,853
Babies in 2025 under 58,093
Estimated living today 6,7001.6 million
Median age today 4540
Peak year 19741985
Best rank 597th girls5th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked22nd
First recorded 19381880
Girls / boys 7,109 / 468,279 / 1,982,812

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 Danelles alive today are over 45; half the Daniels are over 40. That is 5 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 Danelle Daniel
England and Wales 9121,704
Scotland 318,825

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: Danelle and Daniel.