The most used girls' names beginning with D in 2025

D is a letter that has moved in opposite directions for girls and boys, and the girls' side is the one going up. The ONS counted 8,820 girls given a D name in 2025 across 313 spellings. Daisy and Delilah between them take 2,634 of those registrations, and both are inside the top 35 for all girls' names, which no D boys' name comes close to matching.

ONS rank (all girls' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
18	Daisy	1,454	Old English daeges eage, day's eye, because the flower opens at dawn
32	Delilah	1,180	Hebrew, usually read as delicate, or as one who weakens, from the Samson narrative
92	Darcie	513	Norman surname d'Arcy, from Arcy in Normandy
118	Dua	411	Arabic dua, supplication or prayer
125	Daphne	390	Greek daphne, laurel, and the nymph turned into one
140	Darcy	351	Norman surname d'Arcy, from Arcy in Normandy
199	Dorothy	253	Greek doron gift and theos god, gift of God
218	Dottie	215	English short form of Dorothy, gift of God
275	Diana	165	Roman goddess of the hunt and moon, probably from an Indo-European root for daylight
304	Dolly	144	English short form of Dorothy, gift of God
329	Darcey	131	A spelling of the Norman surname d'Arcy
346	Darla	124	A twentieth-century American coinage, probably from darling

The most used boys' names beginning with D in 2025

The boys' letter is smaller, at 7,063 babies across 276 names, and its leaders are the classics that once dominated British birth registers. Daniel, Dylan and David are still the three biggest D names for boys, but all three are now outside the top 60 and all three lost ground in 2025. Below them the letter thins out quickly.

ONS rank (all boys' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
62	Daniel	804	Hebrew, God is my judge
72	Dylan	717	Welsh, usually read as dy great and llanw tide; a sea figure in the Mabinogi
73	David	712	Hebrew, beloved
154	Dexter	346	Latin dexter, right-handed or skilful; also an English surname for a dyer
205	Dominic	246	Latin dominicus, of the Lord
224	Douglas	222	Scottish Gaelic dubh glas, dark water, a river name before a personal one
277	Dougie	164	Scottish short form of Douglas, dark water
279	Damian	161	Greek damao, to tame or subdue
372	Declan	112	Anglicised Irish Deaglan, a fifth-century Irish saint; the further meaning is unknown
389	Dawud	106	Arabic form of David, beloved; a prophet in the Quran
444	Diego	87	Spanish, from Santiago; the link to Latin Didacus is disputed
462	Dante	84	Italian short form of Durante, from Latin durans, enduring

Which D names are rising and which are falling

Climbing

Delilah is the letter's climber. It gained a place in 2025 to rank 32nd, but the ten-year column is the real figure: up 134 places since 2015, when it was outside the top 100 altogether. Daisy held its rank exactly and is up 2 places over ten years, which for a name that has been in the top 20 throughout is a sign of unusual stability rather than stagnation.

Slipping

All three D names in the boys' top 100 fell in 2025. David lost 9 places, Dylan 8 and Daniel 3, and over ten years the falls are much larger: Daniel is down 38 places since 2015, Dylan 34 and David 30. Among girls only Darcie fell, by 2 places, and it is down 18 since 2015. There is no published D name that fell further in one year than David.

What the published change columns cannot tell you

Dua, Daphne, Darcy, Dorothy, Dexter, Dominic, Douglas and Declan all sit below rank 100 in the 2025 list, so the ONS publishes no change figure for any of them. Their counts here are exact and their positions are exact; their direction of travel is simply not something the published data supports, and this page does not guess at it.

How big a letter D really is

D is a mid-sized letter, tenth for girls and sixteenth for boys. What makes it distinctive is the gap between the two lists: 8,820 girls against 7,063 boys, with the girls' letter led by names ranked 18th and 32nd overall while the boys' letter tops out at 62nd. Only a handful of letters lean this far towards one sex, and D leans towards girls.

The Darcy family shows how ONS counting works. Darcie at 513, Darcy at 351 and Darcey at 131 are three separate rows for one name, and together they would total 995 babies, which would place the name well inside the top 50. The same happens with Dottie and Dolly, both pet forms of Dorothy that now outrank Dorothy's own 253 registrations combined.

Further D names in the published 2025 list

The ONS full list does not stop at the tables above, and the counts stay exact all the way down. For girls the next names in order of use are Dolcie at 116, Dahlia at 111, Duaa at 104, Delilah-Rose at 91, Dulcie at 86, Dakota at 81, Deborah at 68, Daniella at 64, Demi at 61, Dollie at 55, Daisy-Mae at 54, Dalia at 54. For boys they are Danny at 83, Darius at 81, Dawson at 81, Dennis at 81, Denis at 80, Dominik at 79, Dion at 68, Dalton at 60, Denny at 51, Dhruv at 49, Damien at 46, Denver at 46. Each figure is the exact number of babies registered with that exact spelling during 2025, taken from the ONS full-list table rather than from the top 100. The letter carries 313 different girls' names and 276 different boys' names in the published data altogether, and any name given to two or fewer babies has been removed from it.

Choosing a D name: what the data changes

If you are drawn to D for a boy, the data suggests you will be choosing against the current rather than with it, which some parents want. Dexter at 346 and Dominic at 246 are outside the top 100 but comfortably established. For a girl, the opposite is true, and the risk is the other way: Daisy and Delilah are both common enough that a class of thirty is likely to contain one.

Baby names starting with D: girls and boys