Donel
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Donel has been given to 721 babies in the U.S. since 1916. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1970, with 18 recorded.
Babies named Donel, 2014
1 in 618,000
Donel over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Donel?
Donel had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2014, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 2014
- 1 in 618,000
- 6 of 3,706,812 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 320,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 2014
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 428,229 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Donel sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2014 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 428,229 children born in 2014 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Donel. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Donels were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Donel was born before 1957 — so the typical Donel is around 68 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1930s
- 14.9% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 12.9%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 426
- People you could plausibly meet
1930s — 14.9% of all recorded uses (103).
Is Donel rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 1970 (18)
- Years since peak
- 55
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Shifting
- 18.2% average annual change
Spellings of Donel
Donel is not the most common spelling — Daniel is, with 48.0% against Donel's 0.02%.
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Donel around the world
Where Donel ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.
- France2010–2022#6,097in 2022
Popularity data from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0.
Donel by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
As a boy's name
Names similar to Donel
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Donel
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.