Deirdre
About 16,845 American babies have been named Deirdre since 1921, most of them around 1961. In 2025 it ranked 7,885th. About 15,000 Deirdres are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 56.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Deirdre
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 16,845
- Estimated living today
- 15,000
- Median age today
- 56
- Peak year
- 1961
- Best rank
- 333rd
- Rank in 2025
- 7,885th
- First recorded
- 1921
How old the living Deirdres are
born that year still alive today
Of the 16,845 babies given the name since 1921, about 15,000 are alive — 88 in every hundred. Roughly 360 of them are children and 2,900 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
Origin Irish
From Irish Deirdre, from Old Irish Derdriu.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Deirdres
- Deirdre McCloskey (born 1942)American economist & academic
- Deirdre Lovejoy (born 1962)American actress
- Deirdre O'Connell (born 1951)American actress
People named Deirdre with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Deirdre is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Deirdre is most concentrated in New York (3.7×), Massachusetts (3.5×), Connecticut (2.9×), the District of Columbia (2.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1961
The most popular girls’ names the year Deirdre peaked:
Deirdre elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Deirdre | 12,353 | 7th |
| Scotland girls | Deirdre | 71 | 213th |
| France girls | Deirdre | 20 | 6,229th |
| England and Wales girls | Deirdre | 6 | 3,900th |
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.
Related names
Deirdre 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.