Humanverse

David vs Davis

American parents have registered 3,689,613 Davids since 1880, against 33,114 Davises. David is still ahead, with 6,801 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: David against Davis, 1880 to 2025 0 25k 50k 75k 100k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

David Davis

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

David 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 2021, when David had 7,951 and Davis had 526.

Side by side

  David Davis
Total US births 3,689,61333,114
Most in one year 86,454773
Babies in 2025 6,801434
Estimated living today 2.7 million27,000
Median age today 5621
Peak year 19552007
Best rank 2nd boys395th boys
Rank in 2025 35th668th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 12,959 / 3,676,6541,038 / 32,076

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 Davids alive today are over 56; half the Davises are over 21. That is 35 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 David Davis
France 316,315320
Ireland 50,89229
Scotland 40,70545
England and Wales 38,564253
Italy 11,559310
Switzerland 8,49970

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: David and Davis.