Humanverse

Denika vs Denny

American parents have registered 15,819 Dennys since 1880, against 528 Denikas. Denny is still ahead, with 24 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Denika against Denny, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Denika Denny

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

Denny has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1889 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1990, when Denika had 24 and Denny had 93.

Side by side

  Denika Denny
Total US births 52815,819
Most in one year 28445
Babies in 2025 under 524
Estimated living today 51011,000
Median age today 4056
Peak year 19771947
Best rank 2,838th girls325th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked4,249th
First recorded 19701889
Girls / boys 528 / 0402 / 15,417

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 Dennys alive today are over 56; half the Denikas are over 40. That is 16 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 Denika Denny
England and Wales 26860
Ireland 47

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: Denika and Denny.