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Diane vs Dianne

American parents have registered 520,034 Dianes since 1880, against 95,475 Diannes. Diane is still ahead, with 66 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Diane against Dianne, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Diane Dianne

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

Diane has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1898 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Diane had 60 and Dianne had 22.

Side by side

  Diane Dianne
Total US births 520,03495,475
Most in one year 23,3434,421
Babies in 2025 6621
Estimated living today 394,00070,000
Median age today 6971
Peak year 19551947
Best rank 14th girls83rd girls
Rank in 2025 2,607th5,722nd
First recorded 18981911
Girls / boys 518,651 / 1,38395,289 / 186

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 Diannes alive today are over 71; half the Dianes are over 69. That is 2 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 Diane Dianne
France 24,58035
New Zealand 3,9522,314
Scotland 2,223375
Ireland 1,064101
England and Wales 29536

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: Diane and Dianne.