Delaney
Delaney is a girl's name that peaked in 2004, when it was the 169th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 242nd. About 46,000 Delaneys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 17.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Delaney boys named Delaney
Girls and boys called Delaney
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Delaney crossed from boys to girls in 1974, and has stayed there for 6 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 68% girls, and in 2025 it was 99%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 55 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
- 46,650
- Estimated living today
- 46,000
- Median age today
- 17
- Peak year
- 2004
- Best rank
- 169th
- Rank in 2025
- 242nd
- First recorded
- 1912
- Girls / boys
- 45,437 / 1,213
How old the living Delaneys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 46,650 babies given the name since 1912, about 46,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 23,000 of them are children and 100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2008 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 a Norman baronial surname, from a place in France, Old French del aunaie (“from the alder grove”). In Ireland an anglicization of Irish Ó Dubhshláine (descendant of Black (dubh) + Challenge (slán)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Delaneys
- Delaney Schnell (born 1998)American diver
People named Delaney with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Delaney is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Delaney is most concentrated in Delaware (2.6×), New Hampshire (2.1×), Colorado (2.0×), Nebraska (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2004
The most popular girls’ names the year Delaney peaked:
Delaney elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Delaney | 216 | 2,090th |
| England and Wales boys | Delaney | 57 | 3,411th |
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
Delaney 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.