The English name Deborah developed from the Hebrew name Devorah meaning ‘bee’. It is the name of a prophetess in the Old Testament Book of Judges.
Deborah is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Deborah 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, Deborah ranks 764. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Deborah. In total, there are currently 731,544 people – children, adults and seniors – named Deborah living in the United States, which is approximately 0.22 % of the entire population.
The English name Deborah developed from the Hebrew name Devorah meaning ‘bee’. It is the name of a prophetess in the Old Testament Book of Judges.
Deborah was very popular... during the 1950s and 1960s. Before and after that, it was rather rare.
The name Deborah belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Deborah is one of only 432 girls names that have been given in the USA in every single year since the beginning of the official name statistics and thus since 1880. However, of course, the name was not equally widespread in all 143 years – the most popular it was far back in the last century: In 1955 Deborah was one of the top 10 most popular baby girl names in the entire United States - ranking #2 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Deborah was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1955, when the name Deborah was at the height of its popularity, 52,420 newborns were named Deborah by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 296 times and Deborah occupied place 830 in our ranking of the most popular girls names.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Deborah. Because: There are women and girls named Deborah in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Deborah is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Maryland, where Deborah ranks on place 11. The greatest chance of meeting Deborah, however, is in Delaware, where one in 112 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 211 women and girls and in Utah, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 481 women and girls for their name before you once get Deborah as an answer.
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 seven letters, the name Deborah has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight 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 Deborah 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 Deborah, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Elephant
Butterfly
Orange
Rocket
Apple
Hat
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Deborah
Deborah
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
E
B
O
R
A
H
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
E
B
O
R
A
H
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. Deborah sounds like this:
