The name Dorian was invented by Oscar Wilde for his novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (1891). It tells the story of a man whose portrait ages while he stays young.
Dorian is a male first name. In some cases it's also given to girls.
The name Dorian 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, Dorian ranks 513. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Dorian. In the entire USA, approximately 21,342 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Dorian. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
The name Dorian was invented by Oscar Wilde for his novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (1891). It tells the story of a man whose portrait ages while he stays young.
Wilde may have... taken the name from the Dorians, an ancient Greek tribe. Their legendary founder was the hero Dorus, his name probably goes back to Greek 'doron' for 'gift'.
You may not know anyone named Dorian, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 39 states are home to men and boys named Dorian. (To be fair, a given name is only included in a state’s official statistics if there are at least five people with that name living in that state – so it’s entirely possible that there are still a few men and boys named Dorian living in one state or another. If your name is Dorian and you live outside of the states highlighted on the map, please let us know so we can refine our statistics even further). And while the first name is present in many states, it is still not one of the popular ones. In Florida, which has the most people named Dorian relative to the population, you still have to ask 4,092 men and boys their names before you hear Dorian as an answer just once.
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 Dorian 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 Dorian 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 Dorian, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Orange
Rocket
Igloo
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Dorian
Dorian
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
O
R
I
A
N
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
O
R
I
A
N
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. Dorian sounds like this:
