Diana

369,707 people in America carry this name — ranked #131 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it dy A nuh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

D AY0 AE1 N AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 369,707 2020 Census
  • Rank #131 Common
  • Per 100,000 122.4 about 1 in 897 people

Where Diana comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “goddess”.

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.

Diana through the years

363,168 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1957, with 9,459 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 Diana

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

Better avoided

  • Diana Ashley — runs together
  • Diana Amy — runs together
  • Diana Anna — rhymes

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

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

Is Diana used for boys or for girls?

0.1% men
369,281 women

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

How to spell Diana

Diana is how 47% of them spell it — 792,459 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 built the same way as Diana

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the second

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

Where in America Diana is thickest on the ground

In California the name is given 1.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • California ×1.8
  • Texas ×1.4
  • New Mexico ×1.4
  • New York ×1.4
  • the District of Columbia ×1.3

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.

The likeliest 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.

Try it First-Year Costs

Open First-Year Costs 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 Latin origin