Dayna
Feminine
Dayna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 14,460 girls against 87 boys since 1880.
Dana is three names at once, and they have nothing to do with each other. There is a Celtic mother goddess, a Hebrew tribe whose name means judge, and an English surname meaning a Dane. All three arrive at the same four letters and no dictionary can separate them.
How old is the name Dayna?
Dayna first appears in US birth records in 1937 — 88 years ago. The typical Dayna alive today was born around 1983, making them about 42 years old. About 13,500 people named Dayna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dayna most popular?
Dayna peaked in 1982, reaching #543 nationally. Today it ranks #6546, 6,003 places below that high. See the whole 1982 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Dana to Dayna
The story of Dayna
Dana entered American use as a man's name in the nineteenth century, from the surname, and crossed to women in the mid-twentieth; by the 1960s it was firmly a woman's name in the United States. Dayna is the respelling that marks the long a explicitly, and it belongs to the same period. Its best year on file is 1982. In Israel Dana runs independently as a Hebrew name, in Ireland the goddess supplies a separate association, and in Romania and the Czech lands Dana is a standard woman's name from yet another route, which makes this one of the most thoroughly multi-sourced short names in the record.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
Three routes, all genuine. Irish tradition has Danu or Dana, the mother of the Tuatha De Danann, though the form of her name is itself reconstructed and disputed. Hebrew Dan means judge, and Dana is used as its feminine in Israel. English Dana is a surname meaning a Dane. The American name draws on all three, and the y spelling of this form is modern and carries no meaning.
How the name formed
- Dana
- Dayna
Related forms: Dana · Dana · Dana · Dana
Pronouncing Dayna
DAY-nuh
Two syllables with the stress on the first. The Dana spelling is said both DAY-nuh and DAH-nuh in the United States; this spelling settles it on the first.
Nicknames for Dayna
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
- 1937
- Most girls named
- 1988361 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #543reached in 1982
- Change vs 2023
- −39.3%17 in 2025, from 28
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.
Dayna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dana in English — spelling variant
- Dana in Hebrew — related form
- Dana in Czech — related form
- Dana in Romanian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, New York.
Daynas among us
people named Dayna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 94,545 born in 2025 was named Dayna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Dayna
- #6546
- Dayna on the 2025 chart
- #933
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Dayna went to 17 girls in 2025, but Daina is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 27, which makes it the 933rd most-given girls’ name of the year — 5,613 places above the chart.
- Dayna17
- Daina10
About 1 girl in 59,528 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 94,545 for Dayna 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 Charline test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Dayna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Charline climbed just as high around 1928, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Charline's path sketches the road Dayna is walking now.
Dayna sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Dayna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Dayna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The spelling removes the ambiguity that Dana carries about its first vowel.
- Three genuine name traditions are available behind the sound.
- Five letters and no silent ones.
- Dana is far more common and will be written instead.
- Three unrelated etymologies mean no single meaning can be claimed.
- It reads as a name of the 1970s and 1980s in American ears.
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What they receive
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Dayna
Feminine · #6546 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Daynas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 13,500 people named Dayna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Dayna?
- Dayna is the most-used spelling in US records — 17 of the 27 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Daina.
- How popular is the name Dayna in 2025?
- Dayna ranks #6546 among US girl names in 2025, with 17 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Dayna?
- About 1 in every 94,545 US girls born in 2025 was named Dayna — 17 in all.
- Will my child share the name Dayna with classmates?
- Dayna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Dayna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Roseann#6546 · Solveig#6546 · Elona#6546 · Rosette#6546 · Bradie#6546 · Rida#6546 · Gwendalyn#6546 · Lorene#6546
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Dayna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Dayna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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