Dana
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: An American surname
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Dana is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Kuwait it is the 46th most common given name.
- KWKuwait≈1 in 561(inferred from the name graph)
- JOJordan≈1 in 712
- USUnited States1 in 1.6K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Dana itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #564 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 602 (measured from records)
- 1 in 105 (inferred from the name graph)
210,579 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Short form used as a given name; often linked to Hebrew or Slavic roots.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Dana is read(measured from records)
Dana is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English77%
An American surname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish6.3%
alternative letter-case form of DANA
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dana counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #236 | 210,579 | 1 in 1.6K | 172K | Dana | 602 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 101,562 | 1 in 105 | 102K | — | 4 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 46,271as Danna | 1 in 365 | 46K | — | 22 |
| GB United Kingdom | #355 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 3 | Dana | 220 |
| EG Egypt | #841 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | listed | Dana | 80 |
| JO Jordan | #318 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 712 | — | Dana | 99 |
| KW Kuwait | #46 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 561 | — | Dana | 87 |
| LV Latvia | — | 2,425 | 1 in 776 | 2.4K | Dana | 49 |
210,579 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; MVČR — living population register 2017; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); INEC — civil registry names; PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Dana is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Short form used as a given name; often linked to Hebrew or Slavic roots.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In Irish, Irish pagan goddess who gave her name to the Tuatha Dé Danann.
as a nameIrish first names
Daricia, Daryca, Darycia, Darys, Brillante como el día
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
tribo de Dana, próxima de Béja, Tunisia; Dana tribe, near Béja, Tunisia
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- James Dwight Danab. 1813USAmerican mineralogist, scientist and zoologist (1813-1895)
- Dana Andrewsb. 1909USAmerican actor (1909–1992)
- Dana Iveyb. 1941USAmerican actress
- Dana Rosemary Scallonb. 1951IENorthern Irish singer and politician
- Dana Delanyb. 1956USAmerican actress
- Barbara Broccolib. 1960USnot in their usual nameAmerican film producer
- Dana Schweigerb. 1968USAmerican television presenter, entrepreneur and model
- Dana Internationalb. 1969ILIsraeli singer
- Dana Nălbarub. 1976RORomanian singer
- Aaliyahb. 1979USnot in their usual nameAmerican R&B singer (1979–2001)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 119 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 172K | #264 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 102K | #51 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 51K | #59 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 38K | #264 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 4.9K | #361 |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup) | — | 2.4K | #223 |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register) | — | 2.4K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 244 | — |
Reference works 7
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Dana a male or female name?
- Dana is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- Where does the name Dana come from?
- Short form used as a given name; often linked to Hebrew or Slavic roots. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Dana?
- In the etymology graph, Dany, Danna and Danette are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Daniela.
- What does the name Dana mean?
- In English, An American surname.
- How common is the name Dana?
- In the United States, the national register counted 210,579 people named Dana in 2020, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Dana compared with other names?
- In the United States, Dana is the 236th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Dana have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 211 thousand people named Dana, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dana.
- Where is Dana most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dana is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 105 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Dana?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/danaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Dana” — the 236th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.