Dewey
About 34,920 American babies have been named Dewey since 1887, most of them around 1898. In 2025 it ranked 3,848th. About 11,000 Deweys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 66.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dewey boys named Dewey
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 34,920
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 66
- Peak year
- 1898
- Best rank
- 19th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,848th
- First recorded
- 1887
- Girls / boys
- 547 / 34,373
How old the living Deweys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 34,920 babies given the name since 1887, about 11,000 are alive — 33 in every hundred. Roughly 460 of them are children and 6,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1959 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 a surname
Possibly from a place name in Northern France, Douai. Welsh origin from Dewi (David) has also been suggested.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Deweys
- Dewey Redman (1931–2006)American saxophonist
- Dewey Martin (1923–2018)American actor
- Dewey F. Bartlett (1919–1979)American politician
- Dewey Robinson (1898–1950)actor
- Dewey Martin (1940–2009)Canadian rock drummer, best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield
People named Dewey with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dewey is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dewey is most concentrated in West Virginia (4.6×), Kentucky (4.4×), Alabama (3.9×), North Carolina (3.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1898
The most popular boys’ names the year Dewey peaked:
Dewey elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Dewey | 3 | 5,137th |
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
Dewey 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.