Humanverse

Denver

The boy's name Denver has been in the national records since 1880, with 23,413 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 518th. About 17,000 Denvers are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Denver boys named Denver

Girls and boys called Denver

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

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 4,235 girls and 19,178 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 326 to 578.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 114 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
23,413
Estimated living today
17,000
Median age today
12
Peak year
2022
Best rank
479th
Rank in 2025
518th
First recorded
1880
Girls / boys
4,235 / 19,178

How old the living Denvers are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 23,413 babies given the name since 1880, about 17,000 are alive — 75 in every hundred. Roughly 9,800 of them are children and 1,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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 place name, a surname

. The surname Denver ultimately derives from Old English Dene-fær ("crossing or passing of the Danes"), from Dene + fær; or alternatively from den-ōfer ("valley-bank"), from denu + ofer.

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

Notable Denvers

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

Where Denver is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Denver is most concentrated in West Virginia (9.7×), Kentucky (5.4×), Arkansas (2.9×), Oklahoma (2.9×).

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

Names of 2022

The most popular boys’ names the year Denver peaked:

All the names of 2022

Denver elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Denver 615 738th
England and Wales girls Denver 149 2,504th
France boys Denver 135 1,688th
Scotland boys Denver 44 426th
Northern Ireland boys Denver 26 243rd
Ireland boys Denver 10 646th
Scotland girls Denver 8 544th

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.

Denver 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 Denver 5

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

Denver against another name

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

Compare Denver 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.