I don’t know how accurate this website is, but forebears.io has a list of common German names, and the top three are: Peter, Michael, and Wolfgang. Daniel was listed as 171st most popular.
Daniel is among the top ten in almost every year up to 2000. After that it is other names taking over but I didn’t check where Daniel lands, might have been top 20 or top 50 still.
Seeing as the guy in the ad is not likely under 20, Daniel isn’t a weird choice of a name. Certainly better than Klaus or Reinhardt.
That list is almost exclusively old fashioned names, which, combined with the website name makes me wonder if they’re scraping obituaries for the names. I’ve lived here for most of a decade and I’ve never met a Wolfgang or Ursula under 60 (actually of the top ten, I only know young people named Michael, Peter, Thomas, and Maria). I do know several older Wolfgangs and Helgas, so they certainly were common names at one point-the data might just be 80 years delayed. Actually going through it, all of my husband’s older family members’ names are in the top thirty. (Edit: also no idea how accurate this list is, but the most popular names from the 50s are all the same as on the other list, so I suspect it is just gathering data upon death)
I know at least five Daniels in their 20s and 30s though. I’m a) an immigrant, and b) just going off of my own experience, so take that with a grain of salt.
Quick aside about Maria as a man’s name: it’s traditionally Austrian, afaik, and it’s more commonly a second name (like Rainer Maria Rilke), but there’s no chance that 0% of the Marias in Germany are men.
I don’t know how accurate this website is, but forebears.io has a list of common German names, and the top three are: Peter, Michael, and Wolfgang. Daniel was listed as 171st most popular.
I was kind of expecting that question, there is actually an official listing of the most popular German names for babies every year. Goes back a few decades: https://gfds.de/vornamen/beliebteste-vornamen/#topten
Daniel is among the top ten in almost every year up to 2000. After that it is other names taking over but I didn’t check where Daniel lands, might have been top 20 or top 50 still.
Seeing as the guy in the ad is not likely under 20, Daniel isn’t a weird choice of a name. Certainly better than Klaus or Reinhardt.
That list is almost exclusively old fashioned names, which, combined with the website name makes me wonder if they’re scraping obituaries for the names. I’ve lived here for most of a decade and I’ve never met a Wolfgang or Ursula under 60 (actually of the top ten, I only know young people named Michael, Peter, Thomas, and Maria). I do know several older Wolfgangs and Helgas, so they certainly were common names at one point-the data might just be 80 years delayed. Actually going through it, all of my husband’s older family members’ names are in the top thirty. (Edit: also no idea how accurate this list is, but the most popular names from the 50s are all the same as on the other list, so I suspect it is just gathering data upon death)
I know at least five Daniels in their 20s and 30s though. I’m a) an immigrant, and b) just going off of my own experience, so take that with a grain of salt.
Quick aside about Maria as a man’s name: it’s traditionally Austrian, afaik, and it’s more commonly a second name (like Rainer Maria Rilke), but there’s no chance that 0% of the Marias in Germany are men.
Wolfgang is such a sick name