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Denae vs Denise

American parents have registered 374,789 Denises since 1880, against 2,569 Denaes. Denise is still ahead, with 123 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Denae against Denise, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Denae Denise

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

Denise has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2000, when Denae had 75 and Denise had 969.

Side by side

  Denae Denise
Total US births 2,569374,789
Most in one year 8115,422
Babies in 2025 5123
Estimated living today 2,500324,000
Median age today 3361
Peak year 19971961
Best rank 1,828th girls30th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd1,673rd
First recorded 19531882
Girls / boys 2,569 / 0373,422 / 1,367

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 Denises alive today are over 61; half the Denaes are over 33. That is 28 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 Denae Denise
England and Wales 15444

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: Denae and Denise.