Dennis is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Dennis 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 boys names, Dennis ranks 510. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Dennis. In total, there are currently 612,385 people – children, adults and seniors – named Dennis living in the United States, which is approximately 0.18 % of the entire population.
Dennis is the usual English, German and Dutch form of Denis, a French name that goes back to Dionysos, which is the Greek god of wine, fertility, and dance. His name means ‘of Zeus and from Nysa’: He is a son of Zeus and was raised in the region of Nysa.
In the U.S.,... Dennis has long been known. In the 1940s and 1950s, it had an unusual peak in popularity.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Dennis is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Dennis for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Dennis is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Dennis is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #16 Dennis easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1949.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Dennis was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 417 babies were named Dennis in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #612 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2021, when it was only ranked #642 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 387 boys were named Dennis.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Dennis is one of them. However, Dennis is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Iowa seem to particularly fancy this name – the 18,907 men called Dennis who live here are 0,860% of all male residents and push their name up to #21 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Iowa. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 612,385 people with the name Dennis. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Dennis on position 50 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter D is a quite popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 8.5% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters J and A are more common for boys' names.
With six letters, the name Dennis 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 8.5% of all boys' names start with a D, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the boys’ names starting with D is David.
If your name is Dennis 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 Dennis, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Elephant
Nut
Nut
Igloo
Sun
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Dennis
Dennis
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
E
N
N
I
S
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
N
N
I
S
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. Dennis sounds like this:
