The Greek name Daphne means ‘laurel’. In Greek mythology, Daphne was a nymph turned into a laurel tree by her father in order to escape the unwanted pursuit of Apollo.
Daphne is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Daphne isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Daphne ranks 344. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 5 were named Daphne. In the entire USA, approximately 33,948 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Daphne. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
The Greek name Daphne means ‘laurel’. In Greek mythology, Daphne was a nymph turned into a laurel tree by her father in order to escape the unwanted pursuit of Apollo.
In the English-speaking world,... Daphne is used as a given name since the late 19th century.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter D is quite common as an initial letter for girls' names. To be precise, 5.6% of all girls' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M.
With six letters, the name Daphne is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 5.6% of all girls' names start with D, this initial letter occurs much more often than all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: of all the names that begin with a D, Dorothy is the most common.
If your name is Daphne and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Daphne, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Apple
Pig
Hat
Nut
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Daphne
Daphne
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
A
P
H
N
E
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
D
A
P
H
N
E
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Daphne sounds like this:
