Humanverse

Dana vs Danna

American parents have registered 246,842 Danas since 1880, against 25,240 Dannas. But in 2025 it was Danna that was commoner, 787 babies to 269.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Dana Danna

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 128 years and Danna for 18 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Dana Danna
Total US births 246,84225,240
Most in one year 8,0321,231
Babies in 2025 269787
Estimated living today 215,00024,000
Median age today 5215
Peak year 19712010
Best rank 44th girls267th girls
Rank in 2025 1,027th394th
First recorded 18801916
Girls / boys 193,555 / 53,28725,106 / 134

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 Danas alive today are over 52; half the Dannas are over 15. That is 37 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 Dana Danna
France 2,505195
England and Wales 1,86362
Switzerland 63915
Scotland 5263
Poland 852

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 Danna.