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Darius vs Darya

American parents have registered 54,278 Dariuses since 1880, against 1,360 Daryas. Darius is still ahead, with 322 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Darius Darya

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 2024, when Darius had 344 and Darya had 48.

Side by side

  Darius Darya
Total US births 54,2781,360
Most in one year 2,20050
Babies in 2025 32243
Estimated living today 52,0001,300
Median age today 2816
Peak year 19942007
Best rank 155th boys3,329th girls
Rank in 2025 788th3,517th
First recorded 18801961
Girls / boys 272 / 54,0061,360 / 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 Dariuses alive today are over 28; half the Daryas are over 16. That is 12 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 Darius Darya
England and Wales 2,348260
France 2,370170
Belgium 45738
Switzerland 20868
Ireland 23410
Scotland 743
Poland 1628

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 Darya.