Humanverse

Dua vs Duan

American parents have registered 1,485 Duas since 1880, against 571 Duans. Dua is still ahead, with 231 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dua against Duan, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dua Duan

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 68 years in which either name was published, Duan for 41 years and Dua for 27 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Dua Duan
Total US births 1,485571
Most in one year 23125
Babies in 2025 231under 5
Estimated living today 1,500520
Median age today 441
Peak year 20251976
Best rank 1,060th girls1,932nd boys
Rank in 2025 1,060thunranked
First recorded 19931953
Girls / boys 1,485 / 00 / 571

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 Duans alive today are over 41; half the Duas are over 4. That is 37 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 Dua Duan
Switzerland 70929

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: Dua and Duan.