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Darius vs Darnelle

American parents have registered 54,278 Dariuses since 1880, against 616 Darnelles. Darius is still ahead, with 322 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Darius against Darnelle, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Darius Darnelle

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

Darius 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 1950, when Darius had 33 and Darnelle had 11.

Side by side

  Darius Darnelle
Total US births 54,278616
Most in one year 2,20028
Babies in 2025 3225
Estimated living today 52,000570
Median age today 2841
Peak year 19941984
Best rank 155th boys2,437th boys
Rank in 2025 788th12,008th
First recorded 18801943
Girls / boys 272 / 54,006249 / 367

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 Darnelles alive today are over 41; half the Dariuses are over 28. That is 13 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 Darius Darnelle
France 2,3705
England and Wales 2,34815

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: Darius and Darnelle.