Dêê

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Dêê is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Hokkien 李 (Lí), via English Dee, with the initial ⟨L⟩ changed to ⟨D⟩ due to /l/~/d/ allophony when the proceeding vowel is either, [i], [e], or [u] in Philippine Hokkien.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 4.2K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 6.1K
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 6.7K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

20,339 people, 2020

Sources
525 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dee in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 5 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Dêê: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Dêê
  1. Hokkien李Lí(measured from records)
  2. EnglishDee(measured from records)

From Hokkien 李 (Lí), via English Dee, with the initial ⟨L⟩ changed to ⟨D⟩ due to /l/~/d/ allophony when the proceeding vowel is either, [i], [e], or [u] in Philippine Hokkien.

Sources 5

  • 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Dêê counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Dêê is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#57620,3391 in 16K16KDee525
GB United Kingdom#621≈9,100 est.≈1 in 7.2K3Dee252
CA Canada#627≈5,400 est.≈1 in 7K1Dee172
ZA South Africa—≈4,700 est.≈1 in 12K—Dee62
AU Australia#644≈4,200 est.≈1 in 6.1K1Dee177
IE Ireland#293≈1,200 est.≈1 in 4.2K—Dee74
SG Singapore#420≈930 est.≈1 in 6.7K—Dee51
NZ New Zealand—≈830 est.≈1 in 5.9K—Dee89

20,339 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Dêê is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Philippines, Portugal

    Also written Dee, Déé, Dêe, Deé, Dée

  • a separate given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India

    Also written Dee, Dëê, Déë, Dêè, Dèé

4 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Dêê under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Dêê mean, and where does it come from?
From Hokkien 李 (Lí), via English Dee, with the initial ⟨L⟩ changed to ⟨D⟩ due to /l/~/d/ allophony when the proceeding vowel is either, [i], [e], or [u] in Philippine Hokkien. Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and A concise dictionary of first names and 3 other sources.
In which country does Dêê have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 20 thousand people named Dêê, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dee.
How common is the name Dêê?
In the United States, the national register counted 20,339 people named Dêê in 2020, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
How common is Dêê compared with other names?
In the United States, Dêê is the 576th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Dêê?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/d%C3%AA%C3%AA

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Dêê” — the 576th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Dêê parses inside a full name →