Humanverse

Dunia vs Dunya

American parents have registered 629 Dunias since 1880, against 563 Dunyas. But in 2025 it was Dunya that was commoner, 37 babies to 9.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dunia against Dunya, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dunia Dunya

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

Of the 49 years in which either name was published, Dunia for 33 years and Dunya for 16 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Dunia Dunya
Total US births 629563
Most in one year 2937
Babies in 2025 937
Estimated living today 620560
Median age today 2311
Peak year 20042024
Best rank 4,601st girls3,963rd girls
Rank in 2025 10,107th3,903rd
First recorded 19731984
Girls / boys 623 / 6563 / 0

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 Dunias alive today are over 23; half the Dunyas are over 11. That is 12 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 Dunia Dunya
England and Wales 25237
France 15135
Switzerland 4650
Belgium 1083

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: Dunia and Dunya.