Humanverse

Daniel vs Daniela

American parents have registered 1,991,091 Daniels since 1880, against 68,682 Danielas. Daniel is still ahead, with 8,093 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Daniel 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

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 2007, when Daniel had 20,298 and Daniela had 3,079.

Side by side

  Daniel Daniela
Total US births 1,991,09168,682
Most in one year 38,8533,084
Babies in 2025 8,0931,009
Estimated living today 1.6 million68,000
Median age today 4019
Peak year 19852007
Best rank 5th boys108th girls
Rank in 2025 22nd302nd
First recorded 18801947
Girls / boys 8,279 / 1,982,81268,514 / 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 Daniels alive today are over 40; half the Danielas are over 19. That is 21 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 Daniel Daniela
France 437,8552,895
Spain 108,14559,887
England and Wales 121,7041,540
Austria 35,14710,661
Italy 28,3668,477
Poland 34,319868
Ireland 29,757197
Norway 19,948687
Scotland 18,825138
Sweden 7,213297
Northern Ireland 5,2896
Switzerland 4,137715
Belgium 2,774273

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: Daniel and Daniela.