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Dana vs Danyel

American parents have registered 246,842 Danas since 1880, against 3,249 Danyels. Dana is still ahead, with 269 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Dana Danyel

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 2015, when Dana had 363 and Danyel had 29.

Side by side

  Dana Danyel
Total US births 246,8423,249
Most in one year 8,032155
Babies in 2025 2696
Estimated living today 215,0003,100
Median age today 5238
Peak year 19711976
Best rank 44th girls999th girls
Rank in 2025 1,027thunranked
First recorded 18801964
Girls / boys 193,555 / 53,2872,511 / 738

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 Danyels are over 38. That is 14 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 Danyel
France 2,50575
England and Wales 1,86313

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 Danyel.