Debra is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
… it’s a special occasion. That’s because the name Debra is quite rare in the US. While it’s still a name in use, lately, only approximately 3 out of 100,000 girls have been named Debra. In the SmartGenius ranking, Debra is #2,937 on the list of most common girls names. In total, there are currently 545,545 people – children, adults and seniors – named Debra living in the United States, which is approximately 0.16 % of the entire population.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Debra reached its highest rank ever in the year 1956 at #2. In other words: 48,408 newborn girls were named Debra that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Debra is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Debra will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Debra was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Debra ranked 3,386 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 39 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Debra will remain a universally popular name.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Debra. Because: There are women and girls named Debra 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 Debra 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 Iowa, where Debra ranks on place 26. The greatest chance of meeting Debra, however, is in Wyoming, where one in 156 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 283 women and girls and in Arizona, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 466 women and girls for their name before you once get Debra 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 five letters, the name Debra is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. 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 Debra 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 Debra, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Elephant
Butterfly
Rocket
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Debra
Debra
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
E
B
R
A
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
R
A
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. Debra sounds like this:
