Dorcas
Dorcas reached its high-water mark in 1923 at number 616, and has been recorded 7,268 times in all. Its origin is given as Ancient Greek. In 2025 it ranked 3,975th. About 3,600 Dorcases are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 59.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dorcas
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 7,268
- Estimated living today
- 3,600
- Median age today
- 59
- Peak year
- 1923
- Best rank
- 616th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,975th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Dorcases are
born that year still alive today
Of the 7,268 babies given the name since 1880, about 3,600 are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 460 of them are children and 1,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1966 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 Ancient Greek
From translation of Tabitha in the Bible.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Dorcass
- Dorcas Shola Fapson (born 1991)Nigerian actress
- Dorcas Muthoni (born 1979)Kenyan computer engineer and businesswoman
- Dorcas Ajoke Adesokan (born 1998)badminton player
- Dorcas Affo-Toffey (born 1975)Ghanaian entrepreneur, philanthropist and politician
People named Dorcas with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dorcas is most common
Across the country Dorcas is recorded 0.77 times per 100,000 births, so these are the states above that line. Only states with 50 or more recorded Dorcases are ranked here: below that a handful of births makes a rate that moves on chance alone.
Counts favour the big states, which is why the same few lead this list for almost every name.
Births recorded in each state since 1910. A name given to fewer than five babies in one state in one year is not published, so a name's quietest states are missing from this rather than showing zero. Browse names by state.
Names of 1923
The most popular girls’ names the year Dorcas peaked:
Dorcas elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Dorcas | 275 | 1,607th |
| England and Wales girls | Dorcas | 194 | 1,690th |
| Ireland girls | Dorcas | 10 | 512th |
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.
Dorcas 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Dorcas | 16 | 26 |
A count of people on a register – 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
Dorcas 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.