Dan

127,523 people in America carry this name — ranked #442 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it DAN

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

D AE1 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 127,523 2020 Census
  • Rank #442 Common
  • As a surname 2,566 ranked #11,686 the other way round

Where Dan comes from and what it means

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “judge”.

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.

Dan through the years

106,671 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1958, with 3,707 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.

Middle names for Dan

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

Better avoided

  • Dan David — same opening
  • Dan Daniel — same opening
  • Dan 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.

Boys or girls: who is called Dan?

97.1% men
3,660 women

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

How to spell Dan

Dan is how 38% of them spell it — 338,102 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.

Where the name Dan is most common in the US

In Montana the name is given 3.5 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Montana ×3.5
  • Iowa ×2.6
  • Minnesota ×2.2
  • Idaho ×2.1
  • Nebraska ×2.1

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.

Names built the same way as Dan

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.

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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 Hebrew origin