Darrol
Masculine · “from Airelle”
Darrol is one of several American spellings of a Norman surname, and none of them has become the standard one. The word its second half resembles has a fixed size that was agreed by a handful of oil men in a single decade.
How old is the name Darrol?
Darrol first appears in US birth records in 1918 — 107 years ago. The typical Darrol alive today was born around 1952, making them about 73 years old. About 400 people named Darrol are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Darrol most popular?
Darrol peaked in 1947, reaching #1482 nationally. See the whole 1947 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From d'Airelle to Darrol
The story of Darrol
A barrel of oil is forty-two gallons, and the figure comes from the early Pennsylvania fields. Producers there shipped oil in whatever they could find, mostly whiskey barrels, and buyers complained that the volumes were unreliable; a group of producers agreed in the eighteen-sixties to standardize on the forty-two gallon tierce, an old English wine measure, with the extra couple of gallons over forty covering leakage and evaporation in transit. The wooden barrel disappeared within a generation, replaced by tank cars and pipelines, and the unit stayed. Oil has since been traded, taxed and reported in a container nobody has used for more than a century, and the number is the width of a barrel that no longer exists.
Meaning
from Airelle
The surname behind it is Norman and names a place in Calvados, carried to England after the Conquest with the preposition still attached. This spelling changes the ending and nothing else.
How the name formed
- d'Airelle
- Darrell
- Darrol
Pronouncing Darrol
DAR-ul
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The changed ending reduces to the same sound the standard spellings reduce to, so nothing can be heard.
Nicknames for Darrol
Moderate
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
- 1918
- Most boys named
- 194725 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1482reached in 1947
- Change vs 1996
- 0.0%5 in 2005, from 5
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.
Darrols among us
people named Darrol are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Darrol sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Two syllables with front stress is the plainest shape English has.
- The surname behind it is genuinely old and its place is documented.
- Six letters with no silent ones make it quick to write.
- Darrell, Daryl and Darryl are all commoner and will be written for it.
- The changed ending is inaudible, so the spelling must be given aloud every time.
- No spelling in this family is standard, so corrections go in every direction.
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Darrol
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Darrols are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 400 people named Darrol are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Darrol in 2025?
- Darrol is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Darrol with classmates?
- Darrol will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
David#35 · Daniel#22 · Donald#690 · Dennis#707 · Douglas#807 · Dylan#41 · Danny#628 · Dale#1409
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Darrol? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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