Humanverse

Dash vs Dastan

American parents have registered 4,384 Dashes since 1880, against 337 Dastans. Dash is still ahead, with 207 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dash against Dastan, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dash Dastan

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

Dash has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1984 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Dash had 141 and Dastan had 61.

Side by side

  Dash Dastan
Total US births 4,384337
Most in one year 32761
Babies in 2025 20713
Estimated living today 4,400330
Median age today 711
Peak year 20172011
Best rank 741st boys2,145th boys
Rank in 2025 1,056th6,446th
First recorded 19842010
Girls / boys 87 / 4,2970 / 337

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 Dastans alive today are over 11; half the Dashes are over 7. That is 4 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 Dash Dastan
England and Wales 5789

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: Dash and Dastan.