Darryl
- Pronunciation
- [Da-rryl]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Variant Of Darrell.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Darryl
Darryl is a modern spelling variant of Darrell, which developed as a surname-turned-given-name derived from the Norman French place name d'Airelle or a related topographic form. As a variant spelling of a variant of a place name, Darryl has no independent ancient etymology; it represents one of several phonetically similar spellings — Darrell, Daryl, Darryl — that proliferated in twentieth-century American naming as the base sound became fashionable for boys. The -yl ending gives this particular spelling a slightly different visual character from its siblings while sounding identical in speech.
Darryl first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1960 and reached its peak rank of #68 in 1965, at the height of a mid-1960s vogue for this cluster of similarly-sounding masculine names. The name held on in the top-1000 for over five decades, last appearing in 2012 at #948 with 213 births — a long, gradual decline from its peak. Total tracked births reached 36,267. Its principal recorded variant is Daryl, an alternate spelling that traveled a parallel trajectory through the same decades.
Today Darryl reads as a solidly mid-to-late-twentieth-century American masculine name, carrying the casual confidence of its era. Parents choosing it now are typically attached to a family or personal association rather than a current trend. The name's various spellings — all sounding alike — give each form its own visual identity within a shared phonetic family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Darryl
US Popularity History (1960–2012)
Annual US births named Darryl by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1961 with 5,133 boys named Darryl (boy rank #80 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2012, ranked #948 for boys (213 US births). That's 868 places below its 1961 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Darryl Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Darryl the strongest states are Louisiana, Maryland, Alabama.
Strongest boys-name states
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Darryl in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daryl | Dearly Loved: Variant Of Darrell. | Male | English |
Looking for names like Darryl?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Darryl to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Darryl against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).