Dave

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Dave is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In New Zealand it is the 85th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A diminutive of the male given name David, also used as a formal given name.

rarermore common
  • CACanada1 in 1K◐
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 1.1K
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 1.7K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈72K ●

across 9 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
557 ●

1.6M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 3.1K ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

DaveLatin · English●1.8M records
데이브Hangul · Korean●1 records

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●

A diminutive of the male given name David, also used as a formal given name.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Dave is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#274119,777110K rec.——Dave250
CA Canada#16681,11773K rec.—2Dave239
US United States#31667,7431.2M rec.1 in 4.9K68KDave557
PH Philippines#37259,20444K rec.——Dave133
NL Netherlands#42743,59411K rec.—6.6KDave142
AU Australia#41443,58144K rec.——Dave246
IN India—11,64915K rec.—1.5KDave152
DE Germany—9,5919.5K rec.——Dave147
NZ New Zealand#858,0145.1K rec.——Dave129
IT Italy#9105,0935.3K rec.——Dave73
IE Ireland#2244,6404.4K rec.——Dave108
EC Ecuador—1,378△130 rec.1 in 12K1.4K—29

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English1.8M77%
  • 112K5%
  • Spanish104K4%
  • Hindi58K2%
  • French27K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,822,95677%
111,6055%
Spanish103,6344%
Hindi58,2812%
French27,2181%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Dave is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name182K records spelled Dave8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Davé, Dave', Davè, Dāve, Davē

  • Spanish given name151K records spelled Dave9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written D'Ave, Dáve, Dâvë, Dävė, Davé

  • a separate given name128K records spelled Dave5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Davé, Dävé, Davè, Davě

  • French given name33K records spelled Dave9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, United Kingdom

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Davé, Dâve, Dâvê, Dåvé, Dåvë

  • Polish given name13K records spelled Dave21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, United Kingdom, Czechia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Дэйв, Даве, Давэ, Дэив, Davé

93 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Dave is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Informal short form of David.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In fj, to flow, of liquids in a small stream (_drōdrō_ is stronger, and _dobui_ the strongest word); commonly of the flow of blood

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In Serbo-Croatian, third-person plural present of daviti

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Czech, vocative singular of dav

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Breton, envoi, renvoi, référence

    as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

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●

01K2K3K4K1900195020003.3K · 1959

Show as table
Dave in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
1880131
1881135
1882139
1883135
1884159
1885128
1886139
1887111
1888146
1889116
1890152
1891124
1892138
1893113
1894129
1895139
1896118
1897121
1898127
1899120
1900166
1901105
1902112
190388
1904102
1905137
190698
1907107
1908116
1909102
1910178
1911135
1912222
1913249
1914267
1915295
1916329
1917322
1918358
1919361
1920373
1921320
1922325
1923322
1924343
1925362
1926353
1927378
1928324
1929332
1930339
1931383
1932387
1933375
1934458
1935469
1936525
1937593
1938626
1939663
1940769
1941864
19421,054
19431,089
19441,125
19451,077
19461,398
19471,693
19481,508
19491,163
1950874
1951743
1952769
1953768
1954834
19551,050
19561,355
19572,179
19582,957
19593,308
19603,050
19612,802
19622,362
19631,996
19641,535
19651,159
1966868
1967774
1968666
1969562
1970519
1971414
1972313
1973240
1974227
1975186
1976181
1977189
1978165
1979155
1980160
1981170
1982172
1983148
1984152
1985149
1986142
1987134
1988162
1989128
1990124
1991133
1992123
1993123
1994115
1995113
199690
199791
199891
1999103
200096
200198
2002109
2003115
2004100
2005100
200690
2007101
200894
200984
201071
201170
201278
201378
201477
201564
201655
201781
201876
201967
202072
202164
202260
202365
202476
202555

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Dave Bing, b. 1943Dave Cowens, b. 1948Dave Gibbons, b. 1949Dave Legeno, b. 1963Dave Foley, b. 1963Dave Navarro, b. 1967Dave Grohl, b. 1969Dave Sheridan, b. 1969Dave Filoni, b. 1974Joe Gomez, b. 1997
  • Dave Bingb. 1943USAmerican basketball player and politician (born 1943)
  • Dave Cowensb. 1948USAmerican basketball player and coach
  • Dave Gibbonsb. 1949GBEnglish comics artist and writer
  • Dave Legenob. 1963GBBritish actor, boxer and cage fighter (1963-2014)
  • Dave Foleyb. 1963CACanadian actor (born 1963)
  • Dave Navarrob. 1967USAmerican guitarist
  • Dave Grohlb. 1969USAmerican rock musician
  • Dave Sheridanb. 1969USAmerican actor
  • Dave Filonib. 1974USAmerican film director (born 1974)
  • Joe Gomezb. 1997GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 1997)

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 94 sources across 52 countries.

Official registers attesting Dave
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202068K#749
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—6.6K#551
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020206K#5,598
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.2K#6,504
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004K#7,630
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.5K#4,053
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names20241.4K#601
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20241.1K#2,400
AL AlbaniaINSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts)—691#707
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022475—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—461#13,891
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008450#3,426

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 762 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dave?
We estimate roughly 72 thousand people bear Dave (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Dave have the most bearers?
Dave is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled dave.
How common is Dave compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Dave is the 274th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Dave a male or female name?
Dave 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 Dave mean?
Recorded meaning: A diminutive of the male given name David, also used as a formal given name.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dave

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Dave” — the 274th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dave parses inside a full name →