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Dana vs Danniel

American parents have registered 246,842 Danas since 1880, against 2,604 Danniels. Dana is still ahead, with 269 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Dana Danniel

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

Dana has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Dana had 509 and Danniel had 32.

Side by side

  Dana Danniel
Total US births 246,8422,604
Most in one year 8,03251
Babies in 2025 2699
Estimated living today 215,0002,200
Median age today 5241
Peak year 19711959
Best rank 44th girls1,081st boys
Rank in 2025 1,027th8,243rd
First recorded 18801923
Girls / boys 193,555 / 53,287186 / 2,418

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 Danniels are over 41. That is 11 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 Danniel
England and Wales 1,86312

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 Danniel.