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Dennison vs Denver

American parents have registered 23,413 Denvers since 1880, against 760 Dennisons. Denver is still ahead, with 904 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dennison against Denver, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dennison Denver

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

Denver 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 1973, when Dennison had 17 and Denver had 90.

Side by side

  Dennison Denver
Total US births 76023,413
Most in one year 18995
Babies in 2025 under 5904
Estimated living today 56017,000
Median age today 4112
Peak year 19492022
Best rank 1,754th boys479th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked518th
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 0 / 7604,235 / 19,178

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 Dennisons alive today are over 41; half the Denvers are over 12. That is 29 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 Dennison Denver
England and Wales 6764

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: Dennison and Denver.