Darren

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Darren is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In Singapore it is the 90th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Obscure origin, said to be Irish; meaning given by Rule as ‘little great one’.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia1 in 607◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 693
  • IEIreland1 in 911

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈89K ●

across 8 countries

6 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
517 ●

1.4M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 3.8K ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

DarrenLatin · English●1.5M records
דארןHebrew · Hebrew●219 records
ДарренCyrillic · Russian●122 records
ดาร์เรนThai · Thai●86 records
ডযারেনBengali · Bangla●0 records
대런Hangul · Korean●0 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Daren in FR France, CO Colombia, IN India and 6 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Obscure origin, said to be Irish; meaning given by Rule as ‘little great one’.

Sources 1

  • Irish first names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Darren is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#116298,499194K rec.—5Darren292
AU Australia#107190,809114K rec.—93Darren295
US United States#42087,647997K rec.1 in 3.8K88KDarren517
CA Canada#29144,87536K rec.—8Darren227
PH Philippines—16,57311K rec.——Darren110
IE Ireland#12910,2396K rec.—23Darren140
MY Malaysia#5529,1165.5K rec.—1.3KDarren101
SG Singapore#906,7235.9K rec.——Darren142
NZ New Zealand#1165,8964.2K rec.—14Darren124
EG Egypt—1,4711.4K rec.——Darren17
FR France—1,2501.1K rec.1 in 54K1.3KDaren107
TH Thailand—1,154797 rec.——Darren81

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English1.5M86%
  • Spanish52K3%
  • 22K1%
  • French17K1%
  • German12K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,508,99686%
Spanish52,2813%
22,3751%
French17,2901%
German11,9711%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Darren is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name83K records spelled Darren8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, United Kingdom, Philippines

    Languages: Spanish, French, Italian

    Also written Därrëñ, Dárren, Darrën

  • Portuguese given name11K records spelled Darren2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Portugal

    Also written Dårrëñ

64 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Darren is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • 20th-century coinage, of uncertain derivation. It may be a transferred use of a surname (itself of obscure origin). It seems to have been first borne by the American actor Darren McGavin (b. 1922). It came to public notice as the name of a character in the popular American television comedy series

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, A male given name originating as a coinage.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, English; great

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • [Ignoto]

    as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…

  • In Swedish, only used in få stora darren

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

02K4K6K194019601980200020205.9K · 1965

Show as table
Darren in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1936–2025
Yearrecords
19367
19396
19416
19436
19459
19468
194711
19487
19495
195011
195122
195268
195343
195439
195534
195644
195771
1958417
19591,299
19602,209
19611,783
19621,923
19632,081
19642,644
19655,938
19664,718
19674,440
19684,642
19694,660
19704,197
19713,156
19722,675
19732,288
19742,074
19752,032
19761,693
19771,503
19781,453
19791,503
19801,533
19811,426
19821,487
19831,599
19841,548
19851,701
19861,578
19871,602
19881,599
19891,625
19901,507
19911,306
19921,323
19931,432
19941,444
19951,290
19961,140
19971,020
19981,028
19991,029
20001,007
2001948
2002969
2003977
2004891
2005864
2006824
2007876
2008799
2009765
2010695
2011681
2012667
2013593
2014569
2015527
2016528
2017463
2018393
2019374
2020345
2021305
2022284
2023224
2024240
2025187

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 85 years between 1936–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Darren McGavin, b. 1922Darren Star, b. 1961William Regal, b. 1968Darren Aronofsky, b. 1969Darren Shahlavi, b. 1972Darren Lynn Bousman, b. 1979Darren Fletcher, b. 1984Darren Bent, b. 1984Darren Criss, b. 1987Darren Barnet, b. 1991

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 73 sources across 44 countries.

Official registers attesting Darren
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202088K#604
MY Malaysiadata.gov.my — Baby Name Popularity Dashboard (HTML-embedded JSON)—1.3K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20241.3K#1,307
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—348#3,969
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020245#604
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025222#377
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—217#3,327
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—208#4,680
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000190#90,252
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025187—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—181#1,517
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—179#5,656

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 741 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Darren?
We estimate roughly 89 thousand people bear Darren (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Darren have the most bearers?
Darren is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled darren.
How common is Darren compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Darren is the 116th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Darren a male or female name?
Darren is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Darren mean?
Recorded meaning: Obscure origin, said to be Irish; meaning given by Rule as ‘little great one’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/darren

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Darren” — the 116th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Darren parses inside a full name →