Dorothy is the English form of the German name Dorothea, which has its origins in the Greek name Dorotheos. It means ‘gift of god’. Dorothy is in use since the 16th century.
Dorothy is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Dorothy 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, Dorothy ranks 576. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 3 were named Dorothy. In total, there are currently 1,051,580 people – children, adults and seniors – named Dorothy living in the United States, which is approximately 0.31 % of the entire population.
Dorothy is the English form of the German name Dorothea, which has its origins in the Greek name Dorotheos. It means ‘gift of god’. Dorothy is in use since the 16th century.
Dorothy was... extremely popular in the US during the 1920s, with 3% of all girls named that. Before and after that Dorothy was a rare name though.
History tends to focus on the most famous and best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Dorothy is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, Dorothy has reached the SmartGenius top ranking #2 more than once, although the last time was some while ago, way back in the last century in 1927. But even though the peak of its popularity was many decades ago, the name Dorothy has been given to newborn girls every year since records began. Dorothy is of exceptional enduring popularity, conveying the special vibes of the20th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Dorothy was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The popularity of the name Dorothy peaked long ago, but the name has nevertheless arrived in the 21st century. In 2022, it ranked #448 in our statistics - perhaps a far cry from when your grandparents or great-grandparents were kids and Dorothy made it into the top ten more than once, but still: traditional names often prove to be perennial favorites - so, maybe it's only a matter of time before Dorothy tops out again.
Dorothy is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 1,050,274 women would currently turn around if you called out DOROTHY really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Dorothy on position 9 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top female names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many women named Dorothy, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that it’s especially popular in Mississippi? Here, 1,34% of all female residents bear the name Dorothy – that is a total of 25,807 women with this popular name and no other state has as many women named Dorothy relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: in Mississippi Dorothy belongs to the top 10 of all womens names – the 25,807 elevate their name up to place #3 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names for Mississippi.
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 Dorothy 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 Dorothy 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 Dorothy, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Orange
Rocket
Orange
Tiger
Hat
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Dorothy
Dorothy
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
O
R
O
T
H
Y
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
O
T
H
Y
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. Dorothy sounds like this:
