Dakota
About 134,576 American babies have been named Dakota since 1915, most of them around 1995. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 319th. About 132,000 Dakotas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dakota boys named Dakota
Girls and boys called Dakota
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Dakota crossed from boys to girls in 2011, and has stayed there for 14 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 62% girls, and in 2025 it was 49%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 51 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 134,576
- Estimated living today
- 132,000
- Median age today
- 24
- Peak year
- 1995
- Best rank
- 56th
- Rank in 2025
- 319th
- First recorded
- 1915
- Girls / boys
- 41,458 / 93,118
How old the living Dakotas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 134,576 babies given the name since 1915, about 132,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 40,000 of them are children and 40 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a place name
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Dakotas
- Dakota Fanning (born 1994)American actress
- Dakota Johnson (born 1989)American actress
- Dakota Blue Richards (born 1994)English actress
- Dakota Goyo (born 1999)Canadian actor
- Dakota Kai (born 1988)New Zealand professional wrestler
- Dakota Skye (1994–2021)American pornographic film actress
- Dakota Staton (1930–2007)American jazz vocalist
People named Dakota with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dakota is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dakota is most concentrated in Nevada (2.2×), Oklahoma (2.1×), Idaho (2.0×), Alaska (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1995
The most popular boys’ names the year Dakota peaked:
Dakota elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Dakota | 1,764 | 400th |
| England and Wales boys | Dakota | 263 | 1,273rd |
| France girls | Dakota | 195 | 2,019th |
| Scotland girls | Dakota | 186 | 234th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Dakota | 137 | 175th |
| Ireland girls | Dakota | 90 | 474th |
| Belgium girls | Dakota | 37 | 845th |
| France boys | Dakota | 25 | 5,979th |
| Ireland boys | Dakota | 3 | 518th |
| Poland girls | Dakota | 2 birth registrations | 721st |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Dakota: rank by region
In 2006, Dakota was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Dakota | 733 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Dakota by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 538th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Dakota among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Dakota | 10 | 20 |
| Finland boys | Dakota | — | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Dakota lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 475 women called Dakota were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cantabria | Dakota | 20 | 0.065 | 921 |
| Palmas, Las | Dakota | 27 | 0.046 | 1,819 |
| Tarragona | Dakota | 16 | 0.037 | 1,595 |
| Rioja, La | Dakota | 6 | 0.036 | 1,525 |
| Asturias | Dakota | 17 | 0.032 | 1,470 |
| Barcelona | Dakota | 89 | 0.029 | 1,710 |
Listed in 22 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 30 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Dakota against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.