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Dakarai vs Dakota

American parents have registered 134,576 Dakotas since 1880, against 1,511 Dakarais. Dakota is still ahead, with 2,109 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dakarai against Dakota, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dakarai Dakota

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Dakota has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1915 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1976, when Dakarai had 13 and Dakota had 27.

Side by side

  Dakarai Dakota
Total US births 1,511134,576
Most in one year 657,700
Babies in 2025 302,109
Estimated living today 1,500132,000
Median age today 1724
Peak year 20091995
Best rank 2,099th boys56th boys
Rank in 2025 3,658th319th
First recorded 19731915
Girls / boys 18 / 1,49341,458 / 93,118

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Dakotas alive today are over 24; half the Dakarais are over 17. That is 7 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Dakarai Dakota
England and Wales 272,027

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Dakarai and Dakota.