Dona vs Donny

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Dona Donny

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 146 years in which either name was published, Dona for 83 years and Donny for 63 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

• 1880–1959 Dona ahead
• 1960–1964 Donny ahead
• 1965–1966 Dona ahead
• 1967–1969 Donny ahead
• 1970 Dona ahead
• 1971–2025 Donny ahead

Side by side

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 Donas alive today are over 70; half the Donnys are over 52. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Dona South Dakota (3.1×), Nebraska (3.0×), Kansas (2.5×)
• Donny Arkansas (4.3×), Alabama (3.3×), Tennessee (3.2×)

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.

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

• Dona vs Donna
• Dona vs Donald
• Dona vs Don
• Dona vs Donnie
• Dona vs Donovan
• Dona vs Donte
• Donny vs Donald
• Donny vs Donna