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Darius vs Darrel

American parents have registered 54,278 Dariuses since 1880, against 29,892 Darrels. Darius is still ahead, with 322 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Darius against Darrel, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Darius Darrel

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 129 years in which either name was published, Darrel for 71 years and Darius for 58 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Darius Darrel
Total US births 54,27829,892
Most in one year 2,200664
Babies in 2025 32217
Estimated living today 52,00018,000
Median age today 2862
Peak year 19941960
Best rank 155th boys302nd boys
Rank in 2025 788th5,399th
First recorded 18801900
Girls / boys 272 / 54,006123 / 29,769

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 Darrels alive today are over 62; half the Dariuses are over 28. That is 34 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 Darius Darrel
France 2,370155
England and Wales 2,34892
Ireland 23418
Scotland 7447

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: Darius and Darrel.