Damian

78,536 people in America carry this name — ranked #672 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation Alpha.

Say it DAY mee uhn

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

D EY1 M IY0 AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 78,536 2020 Census
  • Rank #672 Familiar
  • As a surname 6,550 ranked #5,161 the other way round

Where Damian comes from and what it means

Greek in origin, reading literally as “taming”.

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 Damian has been given

93,646 babies were given this name since 1912. The busiest year was 2013, with 3,980 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more 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.

Middle names for Damian

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Damian David — same opening
  • Damian Daniel — same opening
  • Damian Donald — same opening

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.

On the way up

Damian is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Is Damian a boy's or a girl's name?

99.6% men
332 women

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

How to spell Damian

Damian is how 61% of them spell it — 127,985 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Names with the same rhythm as Damian

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

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

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 28.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 8.9%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 57.1%
  • Two or more races — 3.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.2%
  • 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.

Where in America Damian is thickest on the ground

In Nevada the name is given 2.7 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Nevada ×2.7
  • New Mexico ×2.6
  • Arizona ×2.4
  • California ×2.0
  • Texas ×1.8

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.

Try it Compare Two Names

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One of those is not in the census file.

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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
Other names of Greek origin