The name Donald originated from the Scottish Gaelic name Dòmhnall meaning ‘ruler of the world’, composed of the Old Irish ‘domun’ for ‘world’ and ‘fal’ for ‘rule’.
Donald is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Donald 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, Donald ranks 468. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Donald. In total, there are currently 1,400,138 people – children, adults and seniors – named Donald living in the United States, which is approximately 0.42 % of the entire population.
The name Donald originated from the Scottish Gaelic name Dòmhnall meaning ‘ruler of the world’, composed of the Old Irish ‘domun’ for ‘world’ and ‘fal’ for ‘rule’.
Donald was a very ... popular name in the 1930s and was even used as a girl's name at that time.
The name Donald belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Donald is one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given in the U.S. every year since official name statistics began in 1880. However, of course, the name has not been equally widespread in all 143 years – it was most popular far back in the last century: In 1934, Donald was one of the top 10 most popular baby boy names in the entire United States - ranking #6 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Donald was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1934, when the name Donald was at the height of its popularity, 30,516 newborns were named Donald by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 402 times and Donald ranked #630 on our list of the most popular boys' names.
Donald is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 1,400,138 people would currently turn around if you called out DONALD really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Donald on position 15 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many people named Donald, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that Donald is especially popular in South Dakota? Here, 1,72% of all male residents bear the name Donald – that is a total of 9,797 men with this popular name and no other state has as many men named Donald relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: In South Dakota Donald even belongs to the top 10 of all male names – the 9,797 men called Donaldelevate their name up to place #8 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names for South Dakota.
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 Donald 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 Donald 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 Donald, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Orange
Nut
Apple
Lion
Dinosaur
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Donald
Donald
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
O
N
A
L
D
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
O
N
A
L
D
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. Donald sounds like this:
