Humanverse

Darby

Darby reached its high-water mark in 1995 at number 499, and has been recorded 11,278 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,564th. About 11,000 Darbys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 28.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Darby boys named Darby

Girls and boys called Darby

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Darby crossed from boys to girls in 1979, having already crossed in 1968, and has stayed there for 47 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 93% girls, and in 2025 it was 84%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 82 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
11,278
Estimated living today
11,000
Median age today
28
Peak year
1995
Best rank
499th
Rank in 2025
2,564th
First recorded
1913
Girls / boys
8,338 / 2,940

How old the living Darbys are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 11,278 babies given the name since 1913, about 11,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 2,300 of them are children and 610 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1997 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 the English place name Derby, from Old Norse djúr (“deer”) + býr (“settlement”).

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

Notable Darbys

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

Where Darby is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Darby is most concentrated in Montana (2.5×), Florida (2.3×), Idaho (2.3×), Washington (2.1×).

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

Names of 1995

The most popular girls’ names the year Darby peaked:

All the names of 1995

Darby elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Darby 240 1,628th
England and Wales boys Darby 79 2,052nd
Scotland girls Darby 30 485th
Ireland boys Darby 10 676th

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.

Related names

Darby against another name

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

Compare Darby with a name of your own

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.