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Darran vs Darryl

American parents have registered 93,419 Darryls since 1880, against 778 Darrans. Darryl is still ahead, with 69 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Darran against Darryl, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Darran Darryl

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

Darryl has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1913 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2021, when Darran had 5 and Darryl had 102.

Side by side

  Darran Darryl
Total US births 77893,419
Most in one year 545,178
Babies in 2025 under 569
Estimated living today 69075,000
Median age today 5259
Peak year 19651961
Best rank 1,000th boys80th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked2,108th
First recorded 19581913
Girls / boys 0 / 7781,134 / 92,285

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 Darryls alive today are over 59; half the Darrans are over 52. That is 7 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 Darran Darryl
Ireland 409266
Scotland 163450
England and Wales 40419

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: Darran and Darryl.