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Darley vs Darren

American parents have registered 104,506 Darrens since 1880, against 18 Darleys. Darren is still ahead, with 187 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Darley against Darren, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Darley Darren

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

Darren has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1936 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1936, when Darley had 6 and Darren had 7.

Side by side

  Darley Darren
Total US births 18104,506
Most in one year 65,963
Babies in 2025 under 5187
Estimated living today 1294,000
Median age today 249
Peak year 19511965
Best rank 4,833rd girls52nd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,132nd
First recorded 19361936
Girls / boys 12 / 6569 / 103,937

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 Darrens alive today are over 49; half the Darleys are over 2. That is 47 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Darley Darren
England and Wales 193,069

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: Darley and Darren.