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Darren vs Daryl

American parents have registered 104,506 Darrens since 1880, against 67,477 Daryls. Darren is still ahead, with 187 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Darren Daryl

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 114 years in which either name was published, Darren for 66 years and Daryl for 48 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Darren Daryl
Total US births 104,50667,477
Most in one year 5,9631,968
Babies in 2025 187113
Estimated living today 94,00052,000
Median age today 4957
Peak year 19651956
Best rank 52nd boys165th boys
Rank in 2025 1,132nd1,529th
First recorded 19361912
Girls / boys 569 / 103,9374,419 / 63,058

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 Daryls alive today are over 57; half the Darrens are over 49. That is 8 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 Darren Daryl
Ireland 10,418772
Scotland 8,9131,010
England and Wales 3,069641
New Zealand 3,143421
France 1,3201,785
Northern Ireland 459108
Belgium 49117

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: Darren and Daryl.