Dorothea

given name · English · Latin script

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

Dorothea is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 85th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A female given name from Ancient Greek, a Latinate variant of Dorothy.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 532◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 677
  • IEIreland1 in 705

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

≈325K ●

across 7 countries

#374 ●

of 16M given names

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
497 ●

6.5M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.1K ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

DorothyLatin · English●5.7M records
דורותיHebrew · Hebrew●1.8K records
ΔωροθεαGreek · Greek●116 records
โดโรธThai · Thai●5 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dorothy in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 18 more, Dorothee in FR France, ES Spain and Dorothée in BE Belgium.

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 female given name from Ancient Greek, a Latinate variant of Dorothy.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dorothea is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#85388,675369K rec.—7Dorothy179
US United States#86304,5485.3M rec.1 in 1.1K305KDorothy497
FR France#544128,35857K rec.—16KDorothee271
CA Canada#107110,275108K rec.—14Dorothy170
AU Australia#207108,741103K rec.—82Dorothy171
DE Germany#226107,93496K rec.—2Dorothea164
IT Italy#21043,89744K rec.—81Dorothy57
PH Philippines#85324,42423K rec.——Dorothy113
RU Russia#98719,40420K rec.——Dorothy26
SG Singapore#2315,89316K rec.——Dorothy85
NL Netherlands#33114,7499.8K rec.1 in 1.2K15KDorothea66
CN China—13,77714K rec.——Dorothy51

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

Languages●

  • English209K56%
  • German76K20%
  • Western Frisian20K5%
  • Dutch17K4%
  • Spanish7.8K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English209,28356%
German75,88920%
Western Frisian19,9745%
Dutch16,6674%
Spanish7,7942%

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◐

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

  • Spanish given name20K records spelled Dorothea14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, France, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French

    Also written Dorothéa, Dorothèa, Dóróthea

  • a separate given name8.4K records spelled Dorothea3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Doróthea, Dorothéa

  • Croatian given name3.5K records spelled Dorothea22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Czechia, Poland, United States

    Languages: Croatian, Polish, Czech

    Also written Dorotea, Доротеа, Dorotéa, Doroteâ

  • Hindi given name769 records spelled Dorothea4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Tanzania, Switzerland

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Dórothea, Dóróthea

55 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●

Dorothea is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, a female given name, equivalent to English Dorothy

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

  • In English, Greek, 'gift of God'

    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, Greek; the gift of God

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

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●

05001K1.5K1900195020001.1K · 1920

Show as table
Dorothea in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188016
188121
188215
188330
188440
188534
188635
188762
188838
188956
189052
189167
189265
189388
189477
189576
189683
189791
1898114
189994
1900140
1901109
1902124
1903136
1904168
1905217
1906178
1907239
1908246
1909253
1910307
1911389
1912562
1913658
1914731
1915925
19161,036
19171,076
19181,065
19191,001
19201,110
19211,057
1922931
1923925
1924937
1925891
1926758
1927707
1928630
1929572
1930640
1931505
1932443
1933422
1934441
1935402
1936368
1937309
1938316
1939334
1940350
1941295
1942340
1943335
1944300
1945249
1946287
1947316
1948296
1949343
1950308
1951283
1952320
1953302
1954298
1955312
1956294
1957300
1958298
1959293
1960280
1961308
1962313
1963259
1964256
1965211
1966207
1967184
1968160
1969148
1970129
1971101
1972102
197366
197471
197564
197656
197761
197859
197959
198049
198154
198248
198352
198441
198543
198645
198744
198851
198951
199043
199138
199233
199332
199431
199522
199621
199727
199824
199928
200018
200118
200233
200326
200422
200514
200620
200715
200823
200921
201021
201116
201219
201326
201428
201538
201644
201745
201860
201948
202059
202174
202263
202362
202493
2025113

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●

16001700180019002000Countess Palatine Dorothea Sophie of Neuburg, b. 1670Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, b. 1687Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, b. 1715Frederica of Baden, b. 1781Dorothea Lynde Dix, b. 1802Sophia of Prussia, b. 1870Dorothea Douglass, b. 1878Dorothea Lange, b. 1895Mrs. Max Ernst, b. 1910leader of the free world, b. 1954

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 71 sources across 40 countries.

Official registers attesting Dorothea
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—15K#153
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202012K#2,241
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—5.2K#677
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.2K#1,523
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)2024465#274
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—460#2,260
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—366#1,981
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—274#3,803
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—228#901
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—216#24,150
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020209—
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022203—

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 395 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dorothea?
We estimate roughly 325 thousand people bear Dorothea (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Dorothea have the most bearers?
Dorothea is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled dorothy.
How common is Dorothea compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Dorothea is the 85th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Dorothea a male or female name?
Dorothea 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 Dorothea mean?
Recorded meaning: A female given name from Ancient Greek, a Latinate variant of Dorothy.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dorothea

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, “Dorothea” — the 85th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dorothea parses inside a full name →