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Deni vs Denis

American parents have registered 21,606 Denises since 1880, against 852 Denis. Denis is still ahead, with 101 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Deni against Denis, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Deni Denis

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

Denis 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 1988, when Deni had 17 and Denis had 93.

Side by side

  Deni Denis
Total US births 85221,606
Most in one year 22625
Babies in 2025 17101
Estimated living today 81015,000
Median age today 3357
Peak year 19741952
Best rank 3,110th girls277th boys
Rank in 2025 8,860th1,708th
First recorded 19461880
Girls / boys 676 / 176873 / 20,733

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 57; half the Denis are over 33. That is 24 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Deni Denis
France 130153,205
England and Wales 1572,574
Belgium 521,050

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: Deni and Denis.