Daniel

1,607,193 people in America carry this name — ranked #9 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Millennials.

Say it DAN yuhl

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

D AE1 N Y AH0 L — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 1,607,193 2020 Census
  • Rank #9 Very common
  • As a surname 78,123 ranked #407 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Daniel

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “the judging God”.

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.

Daniel through the years

1,947,282 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1985, with 38,847 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. 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 Daniel

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Daniel David — same opening
  • Daniel Donald — same opening
  • Daniel Larry — 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

Daniel has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Millennials.

Boys or girls: who is called Daniel?

99.7% men
5,568 women

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

The same name elsewhere

  • Daan Dutch
  • Danil Russian
  • Danila Slov
  • Daneel Dutch
  • Deiniol Welsh
  • Danjels Lett
  • Danihel N.L.D
  • Danielle Italian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

How to spell Daniel

Daniel is how 83% of them spell it — 1,936,268 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.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 67.1%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 4.2%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 22.9%
  • Two or more races — 2.6%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.8%

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.

Names with the same rhythm as Daniel

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher 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
Other names of Hebrew origin