Dale — #1306 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Dale

The Social Security Administration has registered 278,018 babies named Dale between 1881 and 2024, spanning 144 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Dale currently holds the #1306 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1958, when 8,503 babies received it in a single year. Dale is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 21,882 additional births since 1887.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Dale performed strongest in the 1950s, accumulating 75,567 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Dale shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Ohio, which accounts for 23,030 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Michigan and Pennsylvania. In total, SSA state-level files list Dale in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Dale 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 278,018 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.