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Daniel vs Danika

American parents have registered 1,991,091 Daniels since 1880, against 10,697 Danikas. Daniel is still ahead, with 8,093 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Daniel against Danika, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Daniel Danika

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

Daniel 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 2009, when Daniel had 17,604 and Danika had 659.

Side by side

  Daniel Danika
Total US births 1,991,09110,697
Most in one year 38,853709
Babies in 2025 8,09369
Estimated living today 1.6 million11,000
Median age today 4018
Peak year 19852007
Best rank 5th boys454th girls
Rank in 2025 22nd2,542nd
First recorded 18801966
Girls / boys 8,279 / 1,982,81210,697 / 0

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 Daniels alive today are over 40; half the Danikas are over 18. That is 22 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 Daniel Danika
France 437,85520
England and Wales 121,704421
Poland 34,3192
Ireland 29,75768
Scotland 18,82536
Northern Ireland 5,2893
Switzerland 4,1378

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: Daniel and Danika.