Dean
Dean is a boy's name that peaked in 1961, when it was the 84th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 125th. About 137,000 Deans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 56.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dean boys named Dean
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 195,844
- Estimated living today
- 137,000
- Median age today
- 56
- Peak year
- 1961
- Best rank
- 84th
- Rank in 2025
- 125th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 2,914 / 192,930
How old the living Deans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 195,844 babies given the name since 1880, about 137,000 are alive — 70 in every hundred. Roughly 34,000 of them are children and 37,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1969 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
The surname or given name is of multiple origins, depending on context:.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Deans
- Dean Martin (1917–1995)American singer, actor, comedian and film producer
- Dean Acheson (1893–1971)American statesman and lawyer
- Harry Dean Stanton (1926–2017)American actor
- Richard Dean Anderson (born 1950)American actor
- Jeffrey Dean Morgan (born 1966)American actor
- Dean Koontz (born 1945)American writer and screenwriter
- Dean Stockwell (1936–2021)American actor
- Dean Henderson (born 1997)English association football player
People named Dean with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dean is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dean is most concentrated in North Dakota (3.4×), South Dakota (3.2×), Iowa (2.9×), Nebraska (2.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1961
The most popular boys’ names the year Dean peaked:
Dean elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand boys | Dean | 6,096 | 13th |
| Ireland boys | Dean | 5,647 | 24th |
| England and Wales boys | Dean | 5,371 | 80th |
| Scotland boys | Dean | 4,158 | 37th |
| France boys | Dean | 1,110 | 719th |
| Belgium boys | Dean | 962 | 231st |
| Switzerland boys | Dean | 692 | 209th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Dean | 559 | 45th |
| Italy boys | Dean | 276 | — |
| Poland boys | Dean | 4 birth registrations | 599th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Dean: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Dean | 633 | 0.051% | 184th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Dean | 47 | 0.011% | 321st |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Dean | 11 | 0.017% | 117th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Dean | 1 | 0.027% | 10th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Dean is most concentrated in Thurgau, where 0.08% of children were given it – 44 of them.
Dean: rank by region
In 2025, Dean was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Dean | 589 | 9 |
| Wallonia | Dean | 317 | 8 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Dean appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (293rd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Dean by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 123 | 162nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Dean among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Dean | 3,993 | 5,795 |
| Finland boys | Dean | 45 | 104 |
| the Netherlands girls | Dean | — | 37 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Dean against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.