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Dena vs Dennie

American parents have registered 32,535 Denas since 1880, against 4,537 Dennies. Dena is still ahead, with 30 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dena against Dennie, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dena Dennie

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Dena for 142 years and Dennie for 4 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Dena Dennie
Total US births 32,5354,537
Most in one year 1,542114
Babies in 2025 30under 5
Estimated living today 26,0002,400
Median age today 5564
Peak year 19701946
Best rank 208th girls660th boys
Rank in 2025 4,546thunranked
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 32,479 / 56808 / 3,729

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 Dennies alive today are over 64; half the Denas are over 55. That is 9 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 Dena Dennie
England and Wales 137167

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: Dena and Dennie.