Dara
About 14,547 American babies have been named Dara since 1893, most of them around 1981. In 2025 it ranked 1,129th. About 14,000 Daras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 41.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dara boys named Dara
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 14,547
- Estimated living today
- 14,000
- Median age today
- 41
- Peak year
- 1981
- Best rank
- 469th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,129th
- First recorded
- 1893
- Girls / boys
- 13,692 / 855
How old the living Daras are
born that year still alive today
Of the 14,547 babies given the name since 1893, about 14,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 2,500 of them are children and 1,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1984 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 Irish
An Irish saint's name, from Irish Dáire.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Daras
- Dara (born 1998)Bulgarian singer-songwriter
- Dara Shikoh (1615–1659)Indian prince
- Dara Torres (born 1967)American swimmer
- Dara Singh (1928–2012)Indian professional wrestler and actor
- Dara Ó Briain (born 1972)Irish comedian and television presenter
- Dara Howell (born 1994)Canadian freestyle skier
- Dara O'Shea (born 1999)Irish association football player
- Dara Khosrowshahi (born 1969)Iranian businessman
People named Dara with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dara is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dara is most concentrated in New Jersey (2.6×), New York (2.0×), Florida (1.8×), California (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1981
The most popular girls’ names the year Dara peaked:
Dara elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Dara | 2,963 | 73rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Dara | 774 | 74th |
| Ireland girls | Dara | 599 | 175th |
| England and Wales boys | Dara | 570 | 779th |
| England and Wales girls | Dara | 321 | 1,618th |
| France boys | Dara | 205 | 1,522nd |
| France girls | Dara | 135 | 3,309th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Dara | 90 | 204th |
| Scotland boys | Dara | 84 | 378th |
| Scotland girls | Dara | 61 | 480th |
| Switzerland girls | Dara | 52 | 901st |
| Belgium girls | Dara | 6 | 1,107th |
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.
Dara: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Dara | 32 | 0.003% | 849th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Dara | 18 | 0.004% | 493rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Dara | 2 | 0.003% | 175th |
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.
Dara: rank by region
In 2003, Dara was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Dara | 742 | 5 |
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.
Dara by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 546th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Dara 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 | Dara | 16 | 22 |
| Finland boys | Dara | 14 | 20 |
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 Dara lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 868 women called Dara 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Dara | 244 | 0.414 | 299 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Dara | 50 | 0.090 | 1,012 |
| Gipuzkoa | Dara | 16 | 0.043 | 1,352 |
| Lleida | Dara | 9 | 0.040 | 1,427 |
| Burgos | Dara | 7 | 0.039 | 1,339 |
| Tarragona | Dara | 15 | 0.034 | 1,675 |
Listed in 28 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 24 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
Dara 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.