Humanverse

Darcia vs Daryl

American parents have registered 67,477 Daryls since 1880, against 543 Darcias. Daryl is still ahead, with 113 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Darcia Daryl

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

Daryl has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1912 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1949, when Darcia had 20 and Daryl had 1,132.

Side by side

  Darcia Daryl
Total US births 54367,477
Most in one year 281,968
Babies in 2025 under 5113
Estimated living today 48052,000
Median age today 5957
Peak year 19571956
Best rank 2,067th girls165th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,529th
First recorded 19461912
Girls / boys 543 / 04,419 / 63,058

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 Darcias alive today are over 59; half the Daryls are over 57. That is 2 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.

Country Darcia Daryl
England and Wales 47641

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: Darcia and Daryl.