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Darren vs Darryn

American parents have registered 104,506 Darrens since 1880, against 1,772 Darryns. Darren is still ahead, with 187 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Darren Darryn

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

Darren has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1936 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Darren had 681 and Darryn had 44.

Side by side

  Darren Darryn
Total US births 104,5061,772
Most in one year 5,96382
Babies in 2025 1877
Estimated living today 94,0001,600
Median age today 4932
Peak year 19651965
Best rank 52nd boys815th boys
Rank in 2025 1,132nd9,714th
First recorded 19361958
Girls / boys 569 / 103,93749 / 1,723

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 Darrens alive today are over 49; half the Darryns are over 32. That is 17 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 Darren Darryn
Scotland 8,91388
New Zealand 3,143260
England and Wales 3,0696

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: Darren and Darryn.