Darnell — #2309 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Darnell

The Social Security Administration has registered 28,574 babies named Darnell between 1912 and 2024, spanning 113 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Darnell currently holds the #2309 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1984, when 741 babies received it in a single year. Darnell is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 2,387 additional births since 1917.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Darnell performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 6,295 births during that ten-year window. Across the 12 decades of recorded activity, Darnell shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Illinois, which accounts for 2,940 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and California. In total, SSA state-level files list Darnell in 39 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Darnell 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 28,574 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.