Daniel

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Daniel boys named Daniel

By the numbers

Total US births

1,991,091

Estimated living today

1.6 million

Median age today

40

Peak year

1985

Best rank

5th

Rank in 2025

22nd

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

8,279 / 1,982,812

How old the living Daniels are

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,991,091 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.6 million are alive — 82 in every hundred. Roughly 222,000 of them are children and 247,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1985 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 Hebrew

From Middle English Daniel, Daniell, from Ancient Greek Δᾱνῑήλ, from Hebrew דָּנִיֵּאל, name borne from the prophet whose story is told in the Book of Daniel.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Daniels

• Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)English trader, writer, and journalist
• Daniel Radcliffe (born 1989)English actor and film producer
• Daniel Craig (born 1968)English actor
• Daniel Day-Lewis (born 1957)British actor
• Daniel Ortega (born 1945)dictador of Nicaragua (1979–1990; 2007–present)
• Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782)Swiss mathematician and physicist
• Daniel Alves (born 1983)Brazilian footballer
• Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736)German-Polish physicist and engineer

People named Daniel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Daniel is most common

• CA264,143
• NY180,322
• TX133,259
• IL114,184
• PA112,343
• OH92,146
• MI82,166
• FL71,679
• NJ67,124
• MA64,365

Relative to how many babies each state records, Daniel is most concentrated in Alaska (1.5×), California (1.3×), Massachusetts (1.3×), Wisconsin (1.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1985

The most popular boys’ names the year Daniel peaked:

• Michael
• Christopher
• Matthew
• Joshua
• Daniel
• David

All the names of 1985

Daniel elsewhere

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.

Daniel: births by region

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, Daniel is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.42% of children were given it – 261 of them.

Daniel: rank by region

In 2025, Daniel was given 5 times or more in 4 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Daniel was among the 10 most common names in 9 regions of Spain. It has come first somewhere in 15 different years.

In 2023, Daniel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Daniel was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Daniel appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (9th), Province of Antwerp (106th), Province of West Flanders (162nd) and Province of East Flanders (198th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, 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.

Daniel by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Daniel 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.

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 Daniel lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 310,188 men called Daniel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Danielle
• Danny
• Dana
• Dan
• Daniela
• Dante
• Dane
• Daniella
• Danna
• Danica
• Dannie
• Dani

Daniel against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Daniel vs Danielle
• Daniel vs Danny
• Daniel vs Dana
• Daniel vs Dan
• Daniel vs Daniela
• Daniel vs Dante

Compare Daniel with a name of your own