Humanverse

Dave vs Davyn

American parents have registered 64,492 Daves since 1880, against 678 Davyns. Dave is still ahead, with 55 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dave against Davyn, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dave Davyn

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

Dave 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 2011, when Dave had 70 and Davyn had 50.

Side by side

  Dave Davyn
Total US births 64,492678
Most in one year 3,30854
Babies in 2025 55under 5
Estimated living today 36,000670
Median age today 6515
Peak year 19592007
Best rank 119th boys2,602nd boys
Rank in 2025 2,451stunranked
First recorded 18801993
Girls / boys 114 / 64,37874 / 604

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 Daves alive today are over 65; half the Davyns are over 15. That is 50 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 Dave Davyn
France 1,1605
England and Wales 2453

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: Dave and Davyn.