Duke
About 11,595 American babies have been named Duke since 1880, most of them around 2018. In 2025 it ranked 695th. About 9,700 Dukes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 10.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Duke
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 11,595
- Estimated living today
- 9,700
- Median age today
- 10
- Peak year
- 2018
- Best rank
- 533rd
- Rank in 2025
- 695th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Dukes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 11,595 babies given the name since 1880, about 9,700 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 6,300 of them are children and 860 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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 English
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Dukes
- Duke Ellington (1899–1974)American jazz pianist and composer
- Duke Kahanamoku (1890–1968)American swimmer, surfer and actor
- Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1876–1934)Prince consort of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1934
- Duke Wilhelm I, Duke of Austria (1370–1406)Duke of Inner Austria
- Duke Ludwig of Württemberg (1756–1817)German prince
- Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria (1808–1888)Bavarian Royal
- Duke Carl, Duke of Württemberg (1936–2022)Head of the House of Württemberg
- Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1721–1792)German general
People named Duke with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Duke is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Duke is most concentrated in Hawaii (14.6×), Utah (3.1×), Nevada (2.3×), California (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2018
The most popular boys’ names the year Duke peaked:
Duke elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Duke | 327 | 959th |
| France boys | Duke | 5 | 6,506th |
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.
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.