Declan
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Declan is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Name of an early Irish saint, much increased in popularity in modern times.
- IEIreland1 in 947◐
- AUAustralia1 in 4.6K
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 5.7K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈39K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 331 ●
- 1 in 8.6K ◐
across 8 countries
recorded for this name
52K records
Official registry-verified
United States
Spellings & scripts●
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●
Name of an early Irish saint, much increased in popularity in modern times.
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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 38,769△ | 16K rec. | 1 in 8.6K | 39K | Declan | 331 |
| GB United Kingdom | #549 | 36,268 | 12K rec. | — | 8 | Declan | 198 |
| AU Australia | #562 | 25,108 | 13K rec. | — | 129 | Declan | 186 |
| IE Ireland | #134 | 9,844 | 5K rec. | — | 7 | Declan | 148 |
| CA Canada | #915 | 8,137 | 622 rec. | — | 48 | Declan | 96 |
| NG Nigeria | — | 557 | 879 rec. | — | — | Declan | 41 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 422 | 270 rec. | — | — | Declan | 23 |
| DE Germany | — | 402 | 319 rec. | — | 1 | Declan | 52 |
| JP Japan | — | 369 | 342 rec. | — | — | Declan | 22 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 291 | 229 rec. | — | — | Declan | 50 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 206 | 188 rec. | 1 in 84K | 206 | Declan | 38 |
| SE Sweden | — | 75△ | 4 rec. | 1 in 136K | 75 | — | 9 |
Roughly 39K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 8.6K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English97K87%
- Spanish2.1K2%
- French1.7K1%
- German8711%
- Portuguese8511%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 97,089 | 87% |
| Spanish | 2,097 | 2% |
| French | 1,658 | 1% |
| German | 871 | 1% |
| Portuguese | 851 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Declan is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Deagldn, of uncertain derivation. It was borne by a 5th-century disciple of St Colman, who became a bishop in the district of Ardmore, Co. Waterford. In recent years the name has been strongly revived in Ireland.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A male given name from Old Irish, borne notably by Declán of Ardmore
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Deaglán , of uncertain derivation. It was borne by a 5th-century disciple of St Colman, who became a bishop in the district of Ardmore. In recent years the name has been strongly revived in Ireland.
as a word
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1951 | 5 |
| 1955 | 6 |
| 1956 | 5 |
| 1957 | 6 |
| 1959 | 5 |
| 1960 | 7 |
| 1961 | 5 |
| 1962 | 5 |
| 1963 | 10 |
| 1964 | 7 |
| 1965 | 7 |
| 1966 | 5 |
| 1967 | 7 |
| 1968 | 8 |
| 1969 | 9 |
| 1970 | 11 |
| 1971 | 6 |
| 1974 | 9 |
| 1975 | 8 |
| 1976 | 7 |
| 1977 | 6 |
| 1978 | 6 |
| 1980 | 6 |
| 1981 | 10 |
| 1982 | 13 |
| 1983 | 10 |
| 1984 | 8 |
| 1985 | 15 |
| 1986 | 12 |
| 1987 | 14 |
| 1988 | 23 |
| 1989 | 34 |
| 1990 | 37 |
| 1991 | 33 |
| 1992 | 44 |
| 1993 | 49 |
| 1994 | 66 |
| 1995 | 92 |
| 1996 | 105 |
| 1997 | 124 |
| 1998 | 234 |
| 1999 | 351 |
| 2000 | 388 |
| 2001 | 531 |
| 2002 | 562 |
| 2003 | 611 |
| 2004 | 606 |
| 2005 | 842 |
| 2006 | 817 |
| 2007 | 923 |
| 2008 | 942 |
| 2009 | 1,046 |
| 2010 | 1,257 |
| 2011 | 2,169 |
| 2012 | 2,781 |
| 2013 | 3,116 |
| 2014 | 3,321 |
| 2015 | 3,587 |
| 2016 | 3,623 |
| 2017 | 3,470 |
| 2018 | 3,812 |
| 2019 | 3,971 |
| 2020 | 3,601 |
| 2021 | 3,647 |
| 2022 | 3,345 |
| 2023 | 2,814 |
| 2024 | 2,765 |
| 2025 | 2,570 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 68 years between 1951–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Declan Donnellanb. 1953GBBritish theatre director (born 1953)
- Elvis Costellob. 1954GBnot in their usual nameEnglish singer-songwriter (born 1954)
- Declan Quinnb. 1957USAmerican cinematographer
- Declan O'Brienb. 1962USAmerican writer and producer
- Declan Donnellyb. 1975GBEnglish television presenter (born 1975)
- Declan Ruddb. 1991GBEnglish association football player
- Declan McKennab. 1998GBBritish musician
- Declan Riceb. 1999GBEnglish footballer (born 1999)
- Declan Hillb. 2000CACanadian journalist and author
- Declan PowerIEIrish soldier
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 51 sources across 28 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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 · 484 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Declan?
- We estimate roughly 39 thousand people bear Declan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
- In which country does Declan have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 39 thousand people bear Declan in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled declan.
- How common is Declan compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Declan is the 134th most common given name of 13,994 given names recorded there.
- Is Declan a male or female name?
- Declan 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 Declan mean?
- Recorded meaning: Name of an early Irish saint, much increased in popularity in modern times.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/declanThe 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
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, “Declan” — the 134th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.