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Deniz vs Dennis

American parents have registered 623,692 Dennises since 1880, against 2,122 Denizes. Dennis is still ahead, with 381 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Deniz against Dennis, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Deniz Dennis

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

Dennis 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 2020, when Deniz had 80 and Dennis had 420.

Side by side

  Deniz Dennis
Total US births 2,122623,692
Most in one year 8724,605
Babies in 2025 69381
Estimated living today 2,100408,000
Median age today 1567
Peak year 20191952
Best rank 2,339th boys18th boys
Rank in 2025 2,604th707th
First recorded 19611880
Girls / boys 910 / 1,2122,692 / 621,000

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 Dennises alive today are over 67; half the Denizes are over 15. That is 52 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 Deniz Dennis
England and Wales 1,5552,725
France 2,155530
Belgium 706831
Switzerland 716618
Poland 169327
Ireland 16426
Scotland 3275

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: Deniz and Dennis.