Humanverse

Donell

The boy's name Donell has been in the national records since 1915, with 5,418 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 6,446th. About 4,400 Donells are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 48.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Donell boys named Donell

Girls and boys called Donell

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 591 girls and 4,827 boys in all, and in 2014 the split was 0 to 27.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 72 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
5,418
Estimated living today
4,400
Median age today
48
Peak year
1959
Best rank
766th
Rank in 2025
6,446th
First recorded
1915
Girls / boys
591 / 4,827

How old the living Donells are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 30 60 90 120 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 5,418 babies given the name since 1915, about 4,400 are alive — 81 in every hundred. Roughly 340 of them are children and 890 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1977 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 Donell is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Donell is most concentrated in Mississippi (5.3×), Illinois (3.4×), Louisiana (2.6×), South Carolina (2.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1959

The most popular boys’ names the year Donell peaked:

All the names of 1959

Donell elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Donell 174 579th

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

Donell against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Donell with a name of your own

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.