Danna
Feminine · “No single settled meaning”
Danna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 25,106 girls against 134 boys since 1880.
Two syllables, five letters, and that doubled n doing real work: it tells everyone to say the a short, the way they say Anna. Danna has been on the American books since the early twentieth century, quietly at first, and it has found a second life in the Spanish-speaking households of Texas, California and New York, where it sits comfortably beside Daniela.
How old is the name Danna?
Danna first appears in US birth records in 1916 — 109 years ago. The typical Danna alive today was born around 2010, making them about 15 years old. About 24,000 people named Danna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Danna most popular?
Danna peaked in 2010, reaching #267 nationally. Today it ranks #394, 127 places below that high. See the whole 2010 chart.
Danna appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Dana to Danna
The story of Danna
Dana arrived as a given name out of a surname, and in English it traveled to both boys and girls for much of the twentieth century. Alongside it ran the Hebrew Dana, tied to Dan and to the whole Daniel family, which is why the name has never had one tidy meaning. Danna is that name written with a doubled n, a small change that fixes the vowel short and keeps it from drifting toward DAY-nuh. In American records the spelling is strongly represented in Texas, California and New York, where it lives close to Daniela and Daniel and shares their short form, Dani.
Meaningscholars disagree
No single settled meaning — read either as 'a Dane' or as 'judge', depending on which Dana you follow
Danna is generally treated as a spelling of Dana with the n doubled, and Dana itself has two serious readings. One is the English surname route, from an old word meaning a Dane, a person from Denmark. The other is Hebrew, where Dana works as a feminine counterpart to Dan, from a root meaning to judge — the same root behind Daniel and Daniela. Neither reading has pushed the other out.
How the name formed
- Dana
- Danna
Related forms: Dana · Daniela · Danielle · Danya · Danka · Dena
Pronouncing Danna
DAN-uh
The doubled n keeps the first vowel short, as in Anna. Spanish-speaking families often say DAH-nah, with a rounder first vowel; both are standard for this spelling. The one to head off is DAY-nuh, which belongs to Dana.
Nicknames for Danna
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1916
- Most girls named
- 20101,226 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #267reached in 2010
- Change vs 2023
- −25.5%787 in 2025, from 1,056
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Danna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dana in English, Hebrew, Romanian, Czech — spelling variant
- Daniela in Spanish, Italian, Romanian — related form
- Danielle in French — related form
- Danya in Russian — transliteration
- Danka in Polish, Slovak — related form
- Dena in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, New York.
Dannas among us
people named Danna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,042 born in 2025 was named Danna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Danna
- #394
- Danna on the 2025 chart
- #299
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Danna went to 787 girls in 2025, but Dana, Danah and Dannah are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 1,053, which makes it the 299th most-given girls’ name of the year — 95 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 1,526 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 2,042 for Danna itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Lesley test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Danna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lesley climbed just as high around 1979, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lesley's path sketches the road Danna is walking now.
Danna is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Danna is headed
Danna looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 21% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Danna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Danna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Reads correctly on sight in both English and Spanish, with no silent letters and nothing to spell out beyond the double n.
- The doubled n does a job: it signals the short-a pronunciation and separates the name from Dana.
- Comes with Dani already established, a short form thousands of Danielas and Danielles have used for generations.
- Five letters and two syllables — it fits on a form, a name tag and a signature without abbreviation.
- Belongs to a family of names known across English, Hebrew, Spanish, Romanian and Czech, so relatives abroad will recognize it.
- Dana is the far more familiar spelling, so expect the extra n to be dropped on forms and rosters, and expect DAY-nuh from people reading it cold. A one-line correction, but a lifelong one.
- The meaning is genuinely unsettled between the Danish surname reading and the Hebrew one. If you want a single clean answer to give relatives, this name will not hand you one.
- Dani is shared with every Daniela, Daniella and Danielle in the room, which is a lot of them — the full name stays distinctive, the nickname does not.
- Spoken quickly, Danna and Donna can be confused over a phone, though the two names sit generations apart in use.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Danna to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Danna
Feminine · #394 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Dannas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 24,000 people named Danna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Danna?
- Danna is the most-used spelling in US records — 787 of the 1,053 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Dana, Danah and Dannah.
- How popular is the name Danna in 2025?
- Danna ranks #394 among US girl names in 2025, with 787 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Danna?
- About 1 in every 2,042 US girls born in 2025 was named Danna — 787 in all.
- Will my child share the name Danna with classmates?
- Danna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Danna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Jocelyn#393 · Regina#395 · Bonnie#396 · Kaliyah#392 · Murphy#397 · Florence#391 · Melany#398 · Julianna#398
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Danna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Danna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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