Dacota — boys' name

What the Data Says About Dacota

The Social Security Administration has registered 491 babies named Dacota between 1988 and 2022, spanning 35 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Dacota currently falls outside the top 1,000 boys' names for 2022. The name reached its historical peak in 1997, when 40 babies received it in a single year. Dacota is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 188 additional births since 1990.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Dacota performed strongest in the 1990s, accumulating 257 births during that ten-year window. Across the 5 decades of recorded activity, Dacota shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Indiana, which accounts for 5 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Michigan and Texas. In total, SSA state-level files list Dacota in 3 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Dacota in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 491 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.