Donel
Donel reached its high-water mark in 1970 at number 2,125, and has been recorded 721 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2014. About 450 Donels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 54.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Donel boys named Donel
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 721
- Estimated living today
- 450
- Median age today
- 54
- Peak year
- 1970
- Best rank
- 2,125th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1916
- Girls / boys
- 30 / 691
How old the living Donels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 721 babies given the name since 1916, about 450 are alive — 62 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1971 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.
Names of 1970
The most popular boys’ names the year Donel peaked:
Donel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Donel | 15 | 6,097th |
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.
Related names
Donel 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.