Dane
Dane is a boy's name that peaked in 1986, when it was the 221st most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 819th. About 31,000 Danes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 31.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dane boys named Dane
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 33,979
- Estimated living today
- 31,000
- Median age today
- 31
- Peak year
- 1986
- Best rank
- 221st
- Rank in 2025
- 819th
- First recorded
- 1898
- Girls / boys
- 386 / 33,593
How old the living Danes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 33,979 babies given the name since 1898, about 31,000 are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 7,800 of them are children and 2,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1994 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
From Middle English Dane, from Old Norse danir or Old English Dene. Both forms ultimately descend from Proto-Germanic *daniz.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Danes
- Dane DeHaan (born 1986)American actor
- Dane Cook (born 1972)American actor and comedian
- Dane Clark (1912–1998)American film actor
- Dane Ingham (born 1999)New Zealand association football player
- Dane Bird-Smith (born 1992)Australian racewalker
- Dane Scarlett (born 2004)English footballer
- Dane van Niekerk (born 1993)South African cricketer
- Dane Richards (born 1983)Jamaican footballer
People named Dane with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dane is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dane is most concentrated in Hawaii (5.6×), Utah (2.7×), Washington (2.4×), Minnesota (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1986
The most popular boys’ names the year Dane peaked:
Dane elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Dane | 915 | 256th |
| Ireland boys | Dane | 222 | 145th |
| France boys | Dane | 130 | 6,140th |
| Scotland boys | Dane | 99 | 183rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Dane | 15 | 240th |
| France girls | Dane | 5 | 6,189th |
| England and Wales girls | Dane | 3 | 5,785th |
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.
Dane 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Dane | 6 | 9 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Dane 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.