Defne

given name · Turkish · Latin script

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

Defne is a given name, most frequently recorded in Türkiye. It appears chiefly in Turkish and Kurdish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: bay laurel (Laurus nobilis).

rarermore common
  • TRTürkiye1 in 4.2K◐
  • USUnited States1 in 751K
  • CYCyprus1 in 9.1K

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

≈1.9K ●

across 11 countries

Sources
134 ●

125K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 46K ◐

Netherlands

Spellings & scripts●

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dafna in US United States, IL Israel, AT Austria and 8 more.

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●

bay laurel (Laurus nobilis)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Defne is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#664127,696119K rec.—7.7KDefne82
FR France—580—1 in 117K580——
IL Israel—549465 rec.——Dafna66
US United States—4433.8K rec.1 in 751K443Dafna134
NL Netherlands—377326 rec.1 in 46K377Defne14
GB United Kingdom—291253 rec.——Dafna26
CY Cyprus#974251305 rec.——Defne12
BE Belgium—198203 rec.—20Defne7
SE Sweden—190△64 rec.1 in 54K190Defne7
CA Canada—173153 rec.—1Dafna25
PL Poland—115—1 in 333K115——
AU Australia—9284 rec.——Dafna20

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

Languages●

  • Turkish122K86%
  • Kurdish7.7K5%
  • French3.4K2%
  • German3.2K2%
  • English1.5K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Turkish121,55386%
Kurdish7,7165%
French3,3762%
German3,2342%
English1,4851%

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◐

Defne is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German given name6.5K records spelled Defne8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, Netherlands, Austria, United States

    Languages: German, English, Western Frisian

    Also written Defné, Dëfnê

  • French given name4.5K records spelled Defne5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Türkiye, Argentina, Spain

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Defné, Defnë

  • Polish given name472 records spelled Defne9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Bulgaria, Türkiye, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Polish, Bulgarian, Croatian

    Also written Дефне

  • Russian given name45 records spelled Defne6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Дефне

38 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●

Defne is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Turkish, Defnegillerden, yaprakları güzel kokulu, kış yaz yeşil kalan bir ağaç.

    as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)

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●

020406020002010202051 · 2017

Show as table
Defne in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1993–2025
Yearrecords
19935
19975
199810
19996
200011
20018
200212
20039
200419
200517
200622
200717
200815
200922
201021
201125
201228
201319
201426
201528
201648
201751
201839
201931
202026
202122
202221
202330
202433
202533

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 30 years between 1993–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1960198020002020Defne Samyeli, b. 1972Defne Halman, b. 1972Defne Suman, b. 1974Defne Kayalar, b. 1975Defne Joy Foster, b. 1975Defne Ayas, b. 1976Defne Şahin, b. 1984Defne Taçyıldız, b. 2003Defne Sade, b. 2003

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 46 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Defne
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20257.7K#2
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20247.4K#1
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20236.9K#3
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20226.8K#3
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20196.7K#3
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20186.6K#3
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20206.4K#3
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — newborn names20215.8K#5
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024580#1,041
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020443#22,398
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—377#2,434
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)2024375#200

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 233 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Defne?
We estimate roughly 1.9 thousand people bear Defne (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Defne have the most bearers?
Defne is most frequently recorded in Türkiye, where it is most often spelled defne.
How common is Defne compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Defne is the 664th most common given name of 294,597 given names recorded there.
Is Defne a male or female name?
Defne 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 Defne mean?
Recorded meaning: bay laurel (Laurus nobilis)
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/defne

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, “Defne” — the 664th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Defne parses inside a full name →