Dee

given name · English · Latin script

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

Dee is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: person living by the River Dee, or from Welsh dhu ‘black’.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland1 in 5.4K◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 5.8K
  • CACanada1 in 6.2K

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

≈16K ●

across 6 countries

Sources
467 ●

829K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 21K ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Déé in ES Spain and Dée in CH Switzerland.

Meaning & origin●

person living by the River Dee, or from Welsh dhu ‘black’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dee is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#60930,16735K rec.—3Dee193
AU Australia#69117,01721K rec.—1Dee165
US United States#55915,826689K rec.1 in 21K16KDee467
CA Canada#66313,45316K rec.—1Dee133
PH Philippines—7,14711K rec.——Dee102
IT Italy—3,6154.1K rec.——Dee31
MY Malaysia—3,1504.1K rec.——Dee57
ZA South Africa—2,7174.2K rec.——Dee56
DE Germany—2,5164.1K rec.——Dee74
SG Singapore#3151,8452.2K rec.——Dee50
IE Ireland#3401,7182.1K rec.——Dee68
JP Japan—435567 rec.——Dee36

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

Languages●

  • English753K81%
  • 41K4%
  • Spanish40K4%
  • Chinese8K1%
  • German6.5K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English753,35181%
40,7184%
Spanish39,5474%
Chinese7,9751%
German6,5411%

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◐

Dee is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name51K records spelled Dee11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Argentina, Colombia

    Also written Déé, Dèè, Dëë, D'Ee, Dée

  • a separate given name46K records spelled Dee2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Dée

  • Chinese given name12K records spelled Dee3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, South Africa

    Also written De-E, Déé

  • French given name8.9K records spelled Dee5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Also written Dée, Déé, Deè, D'Ee

  • Portuguese given name7.7K records spelled Dee15 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Déé, Dêe, Dêê, Deé, Deê

  • Indonesian given name7.7K records spelled Dee7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Indonesia, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written De'E, Dêé, Deè, Déé, Dëë

73 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●

Dee 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.

  • In English, an anglicized form of Welsh dhu ‘black’; first attested Roger Dee 1642 PrD

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • , 3 Pet form of any of the given names beginning with the letter D- (compare Kay), in particular Dorothy. It is also used as an independent name, and may in some cases be associated with the River Dee (compare }Clyde).

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, letter name; also from the initial D

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In English, Indonesian: popular girl's name

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Oscuridad

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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●

0200400600800190019502000623 · 1961

Show as table
Dee in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2022
Yearrecords
188020
188132
188223
188322
188427
188528
188626
188739
188835
188924
189019
189118
189243
189329
189423
189532
189624
189725
189830
189928
190035
190117
190226
190325
190421
190536
190638
190734
190836
190935
191035
191140
191264
191357
191466
1915120
191688
1917111
1918112
1919125
192097
1921120
1922123
1923116
1924116
1925125
192699
1927102
192883
1929109
193088
193195
1932100
193399
1934111
1935104
1936100
1937120
1938153
1939159
1940175
1941199
1942237
1943206
1944242
1945255
1946283
1947356
1948293
1949301
1950322
1951342
1952393
1953413
1954423
1955462
1956467
1957479
1958519
1959507
1960512
1961623
1962609
1963577
1964567
1965474
1966405
1967371
1968314
1969374
1970313
1971264
1972192
1973165
1974136
1975122
1976116
1977107
197885
197985
198092
198184
198260
198347
198459
198531
198649
198730
198824
198933
199017
199125
199220
199319
199426
199517
199617
199712
19986
199910
200013
200111
200210
200310
20046
200513
200612
20078
20087
20105
20117
201212
201313
20146
20156
20165
20186
20199
20206
20225

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 140 years between 1880–2022. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

190019201940196019802000Dee Brown, b. 1908Dee Wallace-Stone, b. 1948Betsy DeVos, b. 1958Dee Bradley Baker, b. 1962Dee Brown, b. 1968Gabby Giffords, b. 1970Dee Rees, b. 1977B.J. Penn, b. 1978Lindsay Lohan, b. 1986Hayley Westenra, b. 1987
  • Dee Brownb. 1908USAmerican writer and historian (1908–2002)
  • Dee Wallace-Stoneb. 1948USAmerican actress
  • Betsy DeVosb. 1958USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician and philanthropist (born 1958)
  • Dee Bradley Bakerb. 1962USAmerican voice actor (born 1962)
  • Dee Brownb. 1968USAmerican basketball player (born 1968)
  • Gabby Giffordsb. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician and gun control activist (born 1970)
  • Dee Reesb. 1977USAmerican film director, screenwriter
  • B.J. Pennb. 1978USnot in their usual nameAmerican mixed martial artist
  • Lindsay Lohanb. 1986USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer (born 1986)
  • Hayley Westenrab. 1987NZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand singer

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 44 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Dee
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202016K#1,585
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020207K#4,881
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—7K#1,399
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020106.3K#5,535
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020006.1K#5,222
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20204.5K#1,585
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—262#29,504
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007250#8,303
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—126#4,819
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—103#8,357
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—64#38,251
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—47#12,299

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 · 420 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dee?
We estimate roughly 16 thousand people bear Dee (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
In which country does Dee have the most bearers?
Dee is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled dee.
How common is Dee compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Dee is the 609th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Dee a male or female name?
Dee is a female 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 Dee mean?
Recorded meaning: person living by the River Dee, or from Welsh dhu ‘black’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dee

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, “Dee” — the 609th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dee parses inside a full name →