Dorothy

given name · English · Latin script

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

Dorothy 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 Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A female given name from Ancient Greek.

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

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dorothea in DE Germany, NL Netherlands, ZA South Africa and 2 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.

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 Dorothy 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●

  • English5.7M84%
  • Spanish180K3%
  • Arabic140K2%
  • 109K2%
  • Swahili91K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English5,732,56784%
Spanish180,1613%
Arabic139,5782%
108,8092%
Swahili91,2851%

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◐

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

  • Spanish given name327K records spelled Dorothy7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Dórothy

  • a separate given name124K records spelled Dorothy2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Dórothy

  • Polish given name31K records spelled Dorothy33 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Russian

    Also written Дороти, Дороті, Doroti, Dorothee, Dorothée

  • Hungarian given name8.8K records spelled Dorothy4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, United States, Finland, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Döröthy

62 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●

Dorothy is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, Dorothy är en engelsk form av → Dorotea. Namnet blev populärt genom storfilmen Trollkarlen från Oz (1939) där huvudrollen heter Dorothy.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • Usual English form of DOROTHEA . The name was not used in the Middle Ages, but was taken up in the 16th century and became common thereafter. In Scotland it has been used as an Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Diorbhail , also Anglicized as DEVORGILLA . Short form: Dot. Pet forms: Dottie, Dodie, Dolly .

    as a word

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●

010K20K30K40K19001950200040K · 1924

Show as table
Dorothy in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
1880112
1881109
1882115
1883141
1884163
1885196
1886230
1887272
1888373
1889377
1890458
1891566
1892626
1893821
18941,052
18951,127
18961,366
18971,472
18981,671
18991,687
19002,491
19012,173
19022,707
19033,078
19043,477
19053,937
19064,326
19074,967
19085,703
19096,253
19107,318
19118,869
191212,645
191314,674
191418,782
191525,154
191627,418
191728,852
191832,030
191931,733
192036,643
192139,087
192237,716
192339,043
192439,996
192538,570
192636,618
192735,993
192833,733
192931,476
193030,411
193126,524
193224,974
193322,054
193421,281
193519,406
193617,666
193716,572
193816,358
193915,169
194014,875
194114,566
194215,037
194314,793
194413,379
194512,323
194612,797
194712,753
194811,324
194910,410
19509,551
19519,089
19528,609
19538,162
19547,789
19557,242
19566,858
19576,405
19585,539
19595,231
19605,076
19614,732
19624,073
19633,796
19643,533
19652,961
19662,664
19672,314
19682,086
19691,776
19701,799
19711,624
19721,273
19731,175
19741,098
1975976
1976982
1977933
1978914
1979890
1980896
1981788
1982829
1983759
1984681
1985719
1986629
1987614
1988608
1989620
1990596
1991497
1992509
1993476
1994443
1995377
1996350
1997316
1998312
1999335
2000314
2001319
2002264
2003292
2004290
2005237
2006267
2007263
2008244
2009227
2010243
2011279
2012279
2013335
2014385
2015398
2016456
2017507
2018530
2019546
2020565
2021649
2022645
2023664
2024718
2025743

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●

18801900192019401960Dorothy Parker, b. 1893Dorothy L. Sayers, b. 1893Dorothy Hodgkin, b. 1910Dorothy Vaughan, b. 1910Dorothy Lamour, b. 1914Dorothy McGuire, b. 1916Dorothy Dandridge, b. 1922Dorothy Malone, b. 1924Vivian Maier, b. 1926Faye Dunaway, b. 1941

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 77 sources across 46 countries.

Official registers attesting Dorothy
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020305K#166
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201K#24,966
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000894#25,845
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010798#29,550
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025743—
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—607#12,672
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022572—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—567#12,195
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—539#2,620
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020384#166
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—269#4,634
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020216—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 · 800 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

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

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

See how Dorothy parses inside a full name →