Humanverse

Derrick vs Deryck

American parents have registered 146,344 Derricks since 1880, against 561 Derycks. Derrick is still ahead, with 288 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Derrick against Deryck, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Derrick Deryck

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

Derrick has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1917 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Derrick had 580 and Deryck had 12.

Side by side

  Derrick Deryck
Total US births 146,344561
Most in one year 4,17118
Babies in 2025 288under 5
Estimated living today 134,000530
Median age today 4131
Peak year 19802009
Best rank 74th boys5,102nd boys
Rank in 2025 850thunranked
First recorded 19171962
Girls / boys 997 / 145,3470 / 561

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 Derricks alive today are over 41; half the Derycks are over 31. That is 10 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 Derrick Deryck
Scotland 16121

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: Derrick and Deryck.