Della
Della reached its high-water mark in 1917 at number 168, and has been recorded 70,949 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 563rd. About 23,000 Dellas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Della boys named Della
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 70,949
- Estimated living today
- 23,000
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 168th
- Rank in 2025
- 563rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 70,810 / 139
How old the living Dellas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 70,949 babies given the name since 1880, about 23,000 are alive — 33 in every hundred. Roughly 5,000 of them are children and 11,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 coined name
Possibly a variant of Adela or Delia. First appeared in the 19th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Dellas
- Della Reese (1931–2017)American actress and singer
- Della H. Raney (1912–1987)African-American army nurse
- Della Sowah (born 1959)Ghanaian politician and member of parliament
- Lara Della Mea (born 1999)Italian alpine skier
People named Della with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Della is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Della is most concentrated in Kentucky (3.6×), West Virginia (3.2×), Arkansas (2.4×), New Mexico (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular girls’ names the year Della peaked:
Della elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Della | 439 | 832nd |
| France girls | Della | 35 | 5,536th |
| Ireland girls | Della | 22 | 402nd |
| Scotland girls | Della | 9 | 508th |
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.
Della 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 | Della | 15 | 18 |
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.
Related names
Della 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.