Dana
Dana reached its high-water mark in 1971 at number 44, and has been recorded 246,842 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,027th. About 215,000 Danas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dana boys named Dana
Girls and boys called Dana
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Dana crossed from boys to girls in 1935, and has stayed there for 12 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 69% girls, and in 2025 it was 91%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 123 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 246,842
- Estimated living today
- 215,000
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1971
- Best rank
- 44th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,027th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 193,555 / 53,287
How old the living Danas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 246,842 babies given the name since 1880, about 215,000 are alive — 87 in every hundred. Roughly 7,100 of them are children and 34,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
Of origin. Possibly from Dawnay, or else an altered form of Dan or Daniel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Danas
- Dana International (born 1969)Israeli singer
- Dana Delany (born 1956)American actress
- James Dwight Dana (1813–1895)American mineralogist, scientist and zoologist
- Dana Andrews (1909–1992)American actor
- Dana White (born 1969)American businessman and president of UFC
- Dana Rosemary Scallon (born 1951)Northern Irish singer and politician
- Dana Zátopková (1922–2020)Czech javelin thrower
- Dana Scott (born 1932)American mathematician and computer scientist
People named Dana with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dana is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dana is most concentrated in Maine (2.4×), the District of Columbia (1.5×), New Hampshire (1.4×), New Jersey (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1971
The most popular girls’ names the year Dana peaked:
Dana elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Dana | 2,490 | 315th |
| England and Wales girls | Dana | 1,825 | 210th |
| Switzerland girls | Dana | 639 | 186th |
| Scotland girls | Dana | 526 | 150th |
| Italy girls | Dana | 498 | — |
| Belgium girls | Dana | 406 | 298th |
| Norway girls | Dana | 193 | 330th |
| Ireland girls | Dana | 142 | 316th |
| Poland girls | Dana | 85 birth registrations | 243rd |
| England and Wales boys | Dana | 38 | 3,039th |
| France boys | Dana | 15 | 1,583rd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Dana | 13 | 314th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Dana: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Dana | 462 | 0.037% | 165th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Dana | 136 | 0.031% | 149th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Dana | 39 | 0.060% | 51st |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Dana | 2 | 0.054% | 14th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Dana is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.06% of children were given it – 37 of them.
Dana: rank by region
In 2025, Dana was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Dana | 484 | 10 |
In 2024, Dana was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Dana | 163 | 2 |
In 2019, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Dana appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (200th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Dana by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 29 | 314th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Dana among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Dana | 2,675 | 3,181 |
| Finland girls | Dana | 156 | 195 |
| the Netherlands boys | Dana | 23 | 38 |
| Finland boys | Dana | 32 | 37 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Dana lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 2,469 women called Dana were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Girona | Dana | 105 | 0.254 | 423 |
| Barcelona | Dana | 609 | 0.200 | 434 |
| Tarragona | Dana | 85 | 0.194 | 513 |
| Melilla | Dana | 8 | 0.185 | 624 |
| Cantabria | Dana | 50 | 0.163 | 501 |
| Lleida | Dana | 35 | 0.157 | 585 |
Listed in 47 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 5 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Dana against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.