Dan is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
Dan is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth boy, and therefore ranks at 1539 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,538 boys names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 98,132 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Dan. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Dan is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Dan for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Dan is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Dan is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #83 Dan has never been more popular than back in 1881.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Dan was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 97 babies were named Dan in the USA in 2022, ranking it #1,567 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2021, when it was only ranked at #1,743 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics - back then 78 boys were named Dan.
The name Dan may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Dan is apparently especially popular in Montana. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 539 men in Montana is called Dan. In total, that’s 976 people who feel addressed when the name Dan is shouted loudly across Montana and who ensure that their name makes it to #137 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Dan as the answer a total of 98,132 times. This places Dan at #286 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Dan as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter D is a quite popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 8.5% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters J and A are more common for boys' names.
With only three letters, the name Dan is obviously very short. In fact, only 1.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly three letters. Just 0.2% of all first names are even shorter and only have two letters, while nearly 99% of all boys’ and girls’ names use more than three letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all boys' names start with a D, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the boys’ names starting with D is David.
If your name is Dan and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Dan, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Dan
Dan
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
A
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
D
A
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Dan sounds like this:
