Dan
Dan reached its high-water mark in 1960 at number 111, and has been recorded 107,130 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,959th. About 59,000 Dans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dan boys named Dan
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 107,130
- Estimated living today
- 59,000
- Median age today
- 65
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 111th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,959th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 576 / 106,554
How old the living Dans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 107,130 babies given the name since 1880, about 59,000 are alive — 55 in every hundred. Roughly 1,800 of them are children and 31,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 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 Hebrew
From Hebrew דָּן.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Dans
- Dan Brown (born 1964)American novelist
- Dan Quayle (born 1947)vice president of the United States from 1989 to 1993
- Dan Shechtman (born 1941)Israeli scientist
- Dan Castellaneta (born 1957)American actor
- Dan Aykroyd (born 1952)Canadian-American actor
- Lin Dan (born 1983)Chinese badminton player
- Dan Stevens (born 1982)British actor
- Dan Calichman (born 1968)American soccer player
People named Dan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dan is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dan is most concentrated in Montana (3.2×), Wyoming (2.4×), Idaho (2.3×), Washington (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular boys’ names the year Dan peaked:
Dan elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Dan | 4,810 | 374th |
| Norway boys | Dan | 2,375 | 75th |
| England and Wales boys | Dan | 849 | 557th |
| Ireland boys | Dan | 495 | 215th |
| Switzerland boys | Dan | 468 | 274th |
| Belgium boys | Dan | 156 | 645th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Dan | 113 | 200th |
| Scotland boys | Dan | 53 | 344th |
| Poland boys | Dan | 30 birth registrations | 362nd |
| England and Wales girls | Dan | 29 | 3,541st |
| France girls | Dan | 25 | 6,990th |
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.
Dan: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Dan | 319 | 0.026% | 265th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Dan | 146 | 0.034% | 146th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Dan | 2 | 0.003% | 188th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Dan | 1 | 0.027% | 22nd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Dan is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.05% of children were given it – 102 of them.
Dan: rank by region
In 2012, Dan was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Dan | 863 | 5 |
In 2025, Dan was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Dan | 312 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Dan by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 6 | 593rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Dan 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 boys | Dan | 1,039 | 1,500 |
| Finland girls | Dan | 9 | 26 |
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 Dan lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,650 men called Dan and 244 women called Dan were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Girona | Dan | 101 | 0.243 | 392 |
| Lleida | Dan | 54 | 0.229 | 419 |
| Tarragona | Dan | 77 | 0.176 | 504 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Dan | 50 | 0.160 | 533 |
| Barcelona | Dan | 400 | 0.137 | 527 |
| Huesca | Dan | 15 | 0.128 | 577 |
Listed in 38 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 14 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.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madrid | Dan | 74 | 0.020 | 2,212 |
| Barcelona | Dan | 55 | 0.018 | 2,409 |
| Girona | Dan | 6 | 0.014 | 2,861 |
| Palmas, Las | Dan | 8 | 0.014 | 4,373 |
| Balears, Illes | Dan | 9 | 0.014 | 3,180 |
| Valencia/València | Dan | 20 | 0.014 | 2,707 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 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
Dan 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.