Humanverse

Daniel vs Danyal

American parents have registered 1,991,091 Daniels since 1880, against 785 Danyals. Daniel is still ahead, with 8,093 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Daniel Danyal

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 2024, when Daniel had 8,436 and Danyal had 25.

Side by side

  Daniel Danyal
Total US births 1,991,091785
Most in one year 38,85328
Babies in 2025 8,09312
Estimated living today 1.6 million770
Median age today 4022
Peak year 19852002
Best rank 5th boys3,188th boys
Rank in 2025 22nd6,803rd
First recorded 18801972
Girls / boys 8,279 / 1,982,812176 / 609

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 Danyals are over 22. That is 18 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 Danyal
France 437,855100
England and Wales 121,7041,570
Poland 34,3196
Scotland 18,82555
Belgium 2,7745

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 Danyal.