The origin and meaning of the name Darren is unknown. It could derive from the Irish name Darragh, meaning ‘oak tree’, or from English Darrel, a name given to someone from d’Airelle in France.
Darren is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Darren isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Darren ranks 557. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Darren. In the entire USA, approximately 100,973 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Darren. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Darren reached its highest rank ever in the year 1965 at #54. In other words: 5,961 newborn boys were named Darren that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Darren is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Darren will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Darren was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Darren ranked 794 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby boys a total of 283 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Darren will remain a universally popular name.
The name Darren 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 Darren is apparently especially popular in Hawaii. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 576 men in Hawaii is called Darren. In total, that’s 944 people who feel addressed when the name Darren is shouted loudly across Hawaii and who ensure that their name makes it to #146 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 Darren as the answer a total of 100,973 times. This places Darren at #283 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 Darren 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 six letters, the name Darren is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. 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 Darren 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 Darren, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Apple
Rocket
Rocket
Elephant
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Darren
Darren
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
A
R
R
E
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
R
R
E
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. Darren sounds like this:
