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Donato vs Donnie

American parents have registered 68,060 Donnies since 1880, against 3,126 Donatos. Donnie is still ahead, with 89 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Donato against Donnie, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Donato Donnie

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

Donnie 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 2018, when Donato had 30 and Donnie had 79.

Side by side

  Donato Donnie
Total US births 3,12668,060
Most in one year 541,912
Babies in 2025 1389
Estimated living today 2,00045,000
Median age today 3663
Peak year 19261952
Best rank 916th boys156th boys
Rank in 2025 6,446th1,793rd
First recorded 18901880
Girls / boys 0 / 3,1267,132 / 60,928

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 Donnies alive today are over 63; half the Donatos are over 36. That is 27 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 Donato Donnie
England and Wales 9458
France 40530

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: Donato and Donnie.