Daphne
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Greek myth name; nymph transformed into a laurel tree
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dæfni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Daphne is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 4.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 5.7K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 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)
- Sources
- 456 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
33,602 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Greek myth name; nymph transformed into a laurel tree.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Daphne, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Daphne 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 33,602 | 1 in 9.9K | 34K | Daphne | 456 |
| ZA South Africa | #762 | ≈9,900 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | — | Daphne | 61 |
| GB United Kingdom | #635 | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 7K | 6 | Daphne | 191 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Daphne | 96 |
| CA Canada | #829 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 9.6K | 13 | Daphne | 187 |
| BE Belgium | #824 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | 46 | Daphne | 71 |
| SG Singapore | #408 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | Daphne | 105 |
| GY Guyana | — | 199 | 1 in 3.8K | 199 | — | 4 |
| NL Netherlands | #218 | 28 | 1 in 617K | 28 | Daphne | 108 |
33,602 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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Daphne is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Name borne in Greek mythology by a nymph who was changed into a laurel by her father, a river god, to enable her to
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A dryad pursued by Apollo, who was turned into a laurel tree by the river god Peneus.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, nymph loved by Apollo; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Greek, from daphne 'laurel'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, ) Daphna; Dafne: weibl. Vom. griechischen Ursprungs (griech. däphne»Lor beer; Lorbeerbaum«). Der Name geht zurück au f eine griechische Sagengestalt. Nach der griechischen Sage war Daphne eine Nymphe, die, von Apollo begehrt und verfolgt, auf ihre
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Daphne du Maurierb. 1907GBBritish writer (1907–1989)
- Kate Reidb. 1930CAnot in their usual nameEnglish-born Canadian stage, film and television actress (1930-1993)
- Angela Pleasenceb. 1941GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Daphne Zunigab. 1962USAmerican actress
- Daphne Ashbrookb. 1963USAmerican actress (born 1963)
- Daphne Caruana Galiziab. 1964MTMaltese journalist and blogger (1964-2017)
- Daphne Guinnessb. 1967IEBritish and Irish artist and personality
- Daphne Kollerb. 1968ILIsraeli-American computer scientist
- Daphne Rubin-Vegab. 1969PAPanamanian actress
- Daphne Rosenb. 1982ILIsraeli-American pornographic actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 88 sources across 48 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 34K | #1,173 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 12K | #351 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.7K | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 199 | #396 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 153 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 55 | #1,173 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 13 | #323 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2024 | 7 | #1,036 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1962 | 7 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 6 | #476 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 3 | #397 |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Daphne mean, and where does it come from?
- Greek myth name; nymph transformed into a laurel tree. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Daphne a male or female name?
- Daphne is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Daphne have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 34 thousand people named Daphne, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled daphne.
- Where is Daphne most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Daphne is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 3.8 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Daphne?
- In the etymology graph, Defne, Dafne and Dafna are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Daphne?
- A machine transcription gives /dæfni/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Daphne?
- In the United States, the national register counted 33,602 people named Daphne in 2020, about 1 in 9.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Daphne compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Daphne is the 218th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Daphne?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/daphneThe 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, “Daphne” — the 218th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.