Dorothy
The girl's name Dorothy has been in the national records since 1880, with 1,115,908 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 421st. About 253,000 Dorothys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 76.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dorothy boys named Dorothy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,115,908
- Estimated living today
- 253,000
- Median age today
- 76
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 2nd
- Rank in 2025
- 421st
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,112,231 / 3,677
How old the living Dorothys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,115,908 babies given the name since 1880, about 253,000 are alive — 23 in every hundred. Roughly 8,400 of them are children and 196,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1949 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Dorothys
- Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994)British chemist
- Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
- Dorothy Malone (1924–2018)American actress
- Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957)English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer
- Dorothy Day (1897–1980)American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert
- Dorothy Dandridge (1922–1965)American actress and singer
- Dorothy Lamour (1914–1996)American actress and singer
- Dorothy McGuire (1916–2001)American actress
People named Dorothy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dorothy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dorothy is most concentrated in Mississippi (1.9×), Pennsylvania (1.6×), South Dakota (1.5×), Arkansas (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular girls’ names the year Dorothy peaked:
Dorothy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Dorothy | 3,357 | 177th |
| Ireland girls | Dorothy | 654 | 95th |
| France girls | Dorothy | 380 | 773rd |
| New Zealand girls | Dorothy | 303 | 76th |
| Scotland girls | Dorothy | 192 | 174th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Dorothy | 18 | 231st |
| Poland girls | Dorothy | 8 birth registrations | 516th |
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.
Dorothy: rank by region
In 2018, Dorothy was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Dorothy | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Italy after 10 names – 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.
Dorothy 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 | Dorothy | 30 | 55 |
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
Dorothy 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.