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Denise vs Dennie

American parents have registered 374,789 Denises since 1880, against 4,537 Dennies. Denise is still ahead, with 123 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Denise against Dennie, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Denise Dennie

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 143 years in which either name was published, Denise for 113 years and Dennie for 30 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

11 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Denise Dennie
Total US births 374,7894,537
Most in one year 15,422114
Babies in 2025 123under 5
Estimated living today 324,0002,400
Median age today 6164
Peak year 19611946
Best rank 30th girls660th boys
Rank in 2025 1,673rdunranked
First recorded 18821881
Girls / boys 373,422 / 1,367808 / 3,729

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 Dennies alive today are over 64; half the Denises are over 61. That is 3 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 Denise Dennie
England and Wales 444167

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: Denise and Dennie.