Darryle
Masculine · “from Airelle”
Darryle adds a silent e to a name that already carried a doubled consonant, which makes it one of the more heavily decorated spellings in its family. The name itself entered general American use through a film producer who was, for two decades, one of the most powerful people in the industry and who spelled it with two r's and one l.
How old is the name Darryle?
Darryle first appears in US birth records in 1936 — 89 years ago. The typical Darryle alive today was born around 1965, making them about 60 years old. About 1,200 people named Darryle are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Darryle most popular?
Darryle peaked in 1965, reaching #859 nationally. See the whole 1965 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From A Norman place name and then an English surname to Darryle
The story of Darryle
Darryl Zanuck went from writing scripts for a dog to running a studio, co-founded another one, and produced or supervised several hundred films across four decades. He was the last of the studio heads to hold that kind of personal control over what got made, and he made a very large number of decisions that shaped what American film looked like. The name he carried was not common before him. It rose through the nineteen thirties and forties, exactly tracking his visibility, and generated a whole family of respellings as it became popular, of which this is one of the more elaborate. It is a clean example of a name entering the register through a single visible person and then fragmenting.
Meaning
from Airelle
The surname comes from a place in Normandy and reached England with the conquest, and the reading is a location rather than a description. As a first name it is a nineteenth and twentieth-century American borrowing from the surname. Neither the doubling nor the silent e contributes anything to the sense.
How the name formed
- A Norman place name and then an English surname
- Borrowed as an American first name
- Carried into general use by a film producer
- Darryle among the more decorated respellings
Pronouncing Darryle
DARE-ul
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the second reduced almost to nothing. The final e is entirely silent and does not lengthen the vowel before it, which is the one job silent e is supposed to do.
Nicknames for Darryle
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
- 1936
- Most boys named
- 196573 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #859reached in 1965
- Change vs 2011
- +20.0%6 in 2016, 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.
Darryles among us
people named Darryle 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
Darryle 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
- The sound is completely familiar and needs no coaching.
- It carries a genuine Norman place name behind a very twentieth-century reputation.
- Darry works as a short form and is not shared with a crowd.
- Darryl and Darrell are both standard and this spelling will be converted into one.
- The silent e is inaudible and adds a letter to every form your child fills in.
- It is closely tied to the middle of the twentieth century.
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What they receive
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Darryle
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Darryles are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Darryle are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Darryle in 2025?
- Darryle is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Darryle with classmates?
- Darryle 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 Darryle? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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