Dale

188,893 people in America carry this name — ranked #296 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Baby Boomers.

Say it DAYL

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

D EY1 L — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 188,893 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 62.5 about 1 in 1,755 people
  • As a surname 28,382 ranked #1,219 the other way round

Where Dale comes from and what it means

Reads literally as “at the dale”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Dale has been given

299,354 babies were given this name since 1881. The busiest year was 1958, with 9,075 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Dale

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Dale David — same opening
  • Dale Daniel — same opening
  • Dale Eric — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Dale has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Dale used for boys or for girls?

91.6% men
15,912 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Names with the same rhythm as Dale

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The states where Dale is most common

In North Dakota the name is given 2.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • North Dakota ×2.8
  • Maine ×2.7
  • South Dakota ×2.6
  • Montana ×2.5
  • Wisconsin ×2.3

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 89.9%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 4.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 1.4%
  • Two or more races — 2.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.0%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.8%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers