Danella vs Danny

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Danella Danny

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

Danny has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1900 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1914, when Danella had 6 and Danny had 28.

Side by side

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 Dannys alive today are over 62; half the Danellas are over 40. That is 22 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

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

• Danella vs Daniel
• Danella vs Danielle
• Danella vs Dana
• Danella vs Dan
• Danella vs Daniela
• Danny vs Daniel
• Danny vs Danielle
• Danny vs Dana