David

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named David boys named David

By the numbers

Total US births

3,689,613

Estimated living today

2.7 million

Median age today

56

Peak year

1955

Best rank

2nd

Rank in 2025

35th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

12,959 / 3,676,654

How old the living Davids are

born that year still alive today

Of the 3,689,613 babies given the name since 1880, about 2.7 million are alive — 73 in every hundred. Roughly 193,000 of them are children and 819,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1969 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

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

Notable Davids

• David Hilbert (1862–1943)German mathematician
• David Hume (1711–1776)Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian
• David Cameron (born 1966)British politician
• Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)American essayist, poet, and philosopher
• David Beckham (born 1975)English footballer
• David Bowie (1947–2016)English musician and actor
• David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973)Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel (1948–1953, 1955–1963) -
• David Lloyd George (1863–1945)Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922

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

Where David is most common

• CA380,307
• NY285,364
• TX232,793
• PA223,901
• OH205,646
• IL186,563
• MI167,498
• MA116,241
• FL107,663
• IN100,349

Relative to how many babies each state records, David is most concentrated in Rhode Island (1.4×), Vermont (1.4×), the District of Columbia (1.3×), Delaware (1.3×).

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

Names of 1955

The most popular boys’ names the year David peaked:

• Michael
• David
• James
• Robert
• John
• William

All the names of 1955

David 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.

David: 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, David is most concentrated in Uri, where 0.65% of children were given it – 53 of them.

David: rank by region

In 2025, David was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2019, David was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Spain. It has come first somewhere in 4 different years.

In 2023, David was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Italy.

In 2025, David was given 2 times or more in 15 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, David appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (20th), Province of Flemish Brabant (31st), Province of Antwerp (54th), Province of Hainaut (117th), Province of East Flanders (118th), Province of Limburg (132nd) and Province of West Flanders (138th).

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.

David by city

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

David 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 David lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 372,975 men called David 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

• Dave
• Davis
• Davon
• Davion
• Davina
• Davin
• Davian
• Davonte
• Davie
• Davida
• Davey
• Davy

David against another name

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

• David vs Dave
• David vs Davis
• David vs Davon
• David vs Davion
• David vs Davina
• David vs Davin

Compare David with a name of your own