Holiday Calendar

National Danny Day

Next celebratedTuesday, August 24, 2027

The year Danny Boy went on sale, American birth records held 33 boys named Danny. The name caught up, 86,640 of them in the 1950s alone, though nobody recorded who later set August 24 aside for it.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEAugust 24
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Its documentation begins in 2022, on someone else's site.

No founder, organising body or establishing document for National Danny Day has been located, and no legal instrument creates or recognises it. Its earliest documentary trace is a third-party holiday listing published in August 2022.

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INTRO

An Englishman who had never been to Ireland wrote Danny Boy

National Danny Day honours a name, and the record behind that name begins somewhere unexpected, in Bath, England. Frederic Weatherly wrote a lyric called Danny Boy there in March 1910, and rewrote it in 1911. He had never been to Ireland.

That last detail comes from his great-grandson Anthony Mann, who holds the family papers. "One of the mysteries has always been is how this Englishman, who'd never been to Ireland, very upper crust, British, could write something that immediately took off for the Irish," Mann told CBS News in the song's centenary year.

The name itself was in no hurry to follow. When Boosey and Co. published Danny Boy in 1913, the American federal birth record counted 33 boys named Danny that year.

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ORIGINS

Danny Day history

INTRODUCTION

The tune came first, and it came without a name. Trinity College Dublin holds the manuscript, catalogued as TCD MS 3562, f 89v. The library records that it "was supplied to Petrie by Miss Jane Ross of Limavady who described it as very old".

George Petrie printed it in The Ancient Music of Ireland in Dublin in 1855, untitled, harmonised for publication either by Petrie or by his daughter Maryanne. The air acquired the name Londonderry Air only in 1894, when the Irish poet Katharine Tynan Hinkson set a lyric called Irish Love Song to it.

CHAPTER 01

Words that waited two years for their tune

Weatherly had his verses long before he had the melody, and he said so himself. "I had never heard the melody or even heard of it," he recalled, adding that the 1910 lyric "only required a few alterations to make it fit that beautiful melody".

Boosey and Co. published the result in 1913, from 9 East Seventeenth Street in New York and 295 Regent Street in London. The printed credit line reads "Adapted from an Old Irish Air by Fred. E. Weatherly".

CHAPTER 02

A melody carried back from Colorado

The tune reached him through Margaret Weatherly, his sister-in-law. She had sailed to America with Fred's brother in search of silver in Colorado, and on a trip back to England in 1912 she introduced him to the Londonderry Air.

CHAPTER 03

A credit his great-grandson says was never given

Anthony Mann inherited the copyright in 1989 and went looking. He found the family papers archived at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1936, and in them Margaret's own account of how the melody reached Fred, an account that differs considerably from the one in Weatherly's memoirs.

Mann's judgment is blunt: "it seems to me that Fred should have acknowledged her contribution. He didn't." Eddie and Margaret, he writes, went on to die in poverty.

CHAPTER 04

August 24 joins a much older line

The name is far older than the song. Daniel entered use in England during the Middle Ages on the strength of the biblical figure, became rare by the 15th century, and was revived after the Protestant Reformation.

National Danny Day sits at the end of that long line, and it is much the newest part of it. The name's record runs back to the Middle Ages. The day's own beginnings are not documented.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Petrie prints an untitled air

The collector George Petrie put the melody into print for the first time, still nameless.

Boosey and Co. publish Danny Boy

The first edition sold for 60 cents and credited the words to Fred. E. Weatherly.

Danny enters the American top 100

The name reached the hundred most used American boys' names for the first time.

Ireland's register lists Danny

Three boys were registered with the name, its first appearance in the Irish figures.

A Manhattan pub bans the song

Foley's Pub and Restaurant banned Danny Boy for the whole of March.

Danny peaks in Ireland

158 boys were given the name, its highest Irish count and a rank of 41st.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Danny Boy is an old Irish folk song, words and all.

The truth

The melody is Irish and was printed untitled in Dublin in 1855, but the words are English. Frederic Weatherly wrote them in Bath in 1910, two years before the melody reached him.

The myth

Danny is a gender-neutral name.

The truth

Behind the Name files Danny as masculine. Across the whole American federal series, 1880 to 2025, the name was given to 286,648 boys and 1,693 girls, so 0.59 percent of Dannys are female.

The myth

National Danny Day was designated in 2010.

The truth

No federal instrument designates it, in 2010 or in any other year. The 2010 date can be traced only to an earlier version of this page and to listings that copied it.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Danny Day Around the World

Ireland

Danny is still a top-100 name. The Central Statistics Office recorded 78 boys in 2025, ranked 76th, against three boys when it first appeared in 1970.

Poland

Keeps five separate name days for Daniel: April 10, July 15, July 21, October 13 and December 10.

Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Spain

All four keep a Daniel name day on July 21, as Poland does. Five countries share that one date.

Denmark

Marks Daniel on April 19, one of 17 dates Behind the Name records across 12 countries. Not one of them falls in August.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Danny Day by the Numbers

86,640
US boys named Danny, 1950s
1943-1975
Danny's unbroken US male top-100 run
445
US boys named Danny in 2025
8,085
US boys named Daniel in 2025

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Danny Day

MEDICINE

A vow became a Memphis hospital, opened February 4, 1962.

As a struggling young entertainer, Danny Thomas made St. Jude Thaddeus a promise: "Show me my way in life, and I will build you a shrine." St. Jude Children's Research Hospital opened in Memphis on February 4, 1962, in front of a crowd of 9,000 people.

LANGUAGE

The short form carries a courtroom in it

Daniel comes from the Hebrew Daniyyel, built from din, meaning to judge, and el, meaning God, so the name reads as God is my judge. Danny is the diminutive that English, Dutch and German speakers made from it.

MUSIC

More than eighty lyrics were set to this melody

By 1923 more than 80 lyrics had been set to the Londonderry Air, according to Brian Audley's study of the tune. The 1913 edition names the singers it was published for: Mme. Schumann-Heink, Miss Florence Hinkle and Mr. Dan Beddoe.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Danny Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Read the first edition for yourself

Connecticut College has digitised the 1913 Boosey and Co. score, credit line and all. Look at what the publisher actually printed before you decide how Irish the song is.

LOOK

Look up the name in a national birth register

Ireland's Central Statistics Office publishes every boys' name registered three or more times since 1964. Find the year a Danny you know was born and see where the name sat.

SING

Sing it in public, as the score allows

The 1913 edition settles the question on the page itself: no fee, no licence, sing it where you like. The one thing Boosey and Co. forbade was performing a parody of it.

WRITE

Write to someone who carries the name

A name day works best when a person actually hears about it. Send the Danny in your life a note rather than a post nobody sees.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Danny Day?

1 / 8

Who wrote the words to Danny Boy?

Answer

No. No US federal instrument creates or recognises it, and no official status was found elsewhere, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

12sources
7primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
Connecticut College, Greer Music Library1913
Danny Boy, Historic Sheet Music Collection item 45
The 1913 Boosey and Co. first edition, with its printed credit line and performance notice.
View source
Trinity College Dublin Library
In Tune: a millennium of music in Trinity College Library
The library's record of Petrie's 1855 collection and the manuscript of the untitled air.
View source
Social Security Administration2025
Beyond the Top 1000 Names, national baby name data
Every American birth registration by name and sex from 1880 to 2025.
View source
Central Statistics Office2025
Boys Names in Ireland with 3 or More Occurrences, table VSA50
Ireland's official count and rank for every boys' name registered since 1964.
View source
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude history
The hospital's own account of Danny Thomas's vow and its 1962 opening.
View source
Office of the Federal Register
Federal Register document search API
Full-text search across every document published in the Federal Register.
View source
Danny Boy: the story behind the song
Danny Boy the story behind the song
Weatherly's great-grandson on the family archive and Margaret Weatherly's unacknowledged part.
View source
Additional coverage
CBS News2013-12-31
Surprising origins of 100-year-old Danny Boy
Anthony Mann and music journalist Andrew Mueller on the song's English authorship.
View source
CBS News2008-03-06
NYC Irish Pub Bans Danny Boy
A Manhattan publican's month-long ban on the song and his reasons for it.
View source
Corymbus2017-10-10
Tracing The Origins Of Danny Boy
A music essay on the tune's collection, its naming in 1894, and Weatherly's own account.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Danny
Files Danny as a masculine diminutive of Daniel in English, Dutch and German.
View source
Behind the Name
Name Days for the name Daniel
The traditional Daniel name days kept across twelve countries.
View source
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