Humanverse

Dana vs Danial

American parents have registered 246,842 Danas since 1880, against 9,474 Danials. Dana is still ahead, with 269 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dana against Danial, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dana Danial

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Dana for 145 years and Danial for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Dana Danial
Total US births 246,8429,474
Most in one year 8,032210
Babies in 2025 2699
Estimated living today 215,0007,100
Median age today 5252
Peak year 19711957
Best rank 44th girls535th boys
Rank in 2025 1,027th8,243rd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 193,555 / 53,28780 / 9,394

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.

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 Dana Danial
France 2,505125
England and Wales 1,863583
Switzerland 63941
Scotland 5263
Belgium 40610
Ireland 14235

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: Dana and Danial.