Humanverse

Daphne vs Daphney

American parents have registered 44,189 Daphnes since 1880, against 1,513 Daphneys. Daphne is still ahead, with 1,740 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Daphne against Daphney, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Daphne Daphney

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

Daphne has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1886 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1999, when Daphne had 324 and Daphney had 43.

Side by side

  Daphne Daphney
Total US births 44,1891,513
Most in one year 1,74049
Babies in 2025 1,7407
Estimated living today 39,0001,400
Median age today 2431
Peak year 20252001
Best rank 178th girls2,924th girls
Rank in 2025 178th11,932nd
First recorded 18861930
Girls / boys 44,182 / 71,513 / 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 Daphneys alive today are over 31; half the Daphnes are over 24. That is 7 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 Daphne Daphney
France 10,340 Daphné50
England and Wales 2,5736

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: Daphne and Daphney.