Denis
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: a male given name, equivalent to English Dennis; originally given in honor of a third century bishop of Paris, the patron saint of France
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dəni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Denis is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 36th most common given name.
- RURussia≈1 in 127as Денис(inferred from the name graph)
- BYBelarus≈1 in 156as Денис
- CZCzechia1 in 203as Denisa
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Denis itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #56 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 633 (measured from records)
- 1 in 165 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100,000 named Денис, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Moldova
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Денис in RU Russia, UA Ukraine, BY Belarus, Dennis in US United States, PH Philippines, CZ Czechia and Denisse in BR Brazil.
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)
Short form of Dionysius; used in Ireland to anglicise Donagh. Popularity has sharply decreased in recent times.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Denis is read(measured from records)
Denis is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French26%
a male given name, equivalent to English Dennis; originally given in honor of a third century bishop of Paris, the patron saint of France
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Du grec Dionysios, « consacré à Dionysos »; fête/nom-d’agent traditionnel le 9 octobre.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Du grec Dionysios, « consacré à Dionysos »; sens populaire: « deux fois né ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
- English19%
Short form of Dionysius; used in Ireland to anglicise Donagh. Popularity has sharply decreased in recent times.
as a nameIrish first names
A male given name from Ancient Greek, a mostly British and Irish spelling variant of Dennis.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish15%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Denis in Spanish.
- Russian11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Denis in Russian.
- Portuguese8.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Denis in Portuguese.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Denis 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #36 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 127 | #27 | Денис | 278 |
| US United States | #83 | 448,312as Dennis | 1 in 742 | 447K | Dennis | 633 |
| PH Philippines | #84 | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 546 | — | Dennis | 180 |
| UA Ukraine | #61 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 283 | listed | Денис | 125 |
| BR Brazil | — | 154,426as Denise | 1 in 1.4K | 169K | Denisse | 45 |
| BY Belarus | #34 | ≈61,000 est. | ≈1 in 156 | 90 | Денис | 69 |
| CZ Czechia | #105 | 52,598as Denisa | 1 in 203 | 53K | Dennis | 118 |
| MD Moldova | #347 | 20,408 | 1 in 165 | 20K | Denis | 47 |
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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); MVČR — living population register 2017; Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); e-services.md — living population register. 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)
Denis is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Variant spelling of Dennis. This is the usual French form of the name.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Denis Diderotb. 1713FRFrench Enlightenment philosopher writer and encyclopædist (1713–1784)
- Denis Poissonb. 1781FRFrench mathematician, mechanician and physicist (1781–1840)
- Dennis Gaborb. 1900HUNobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography
- George Carlinb. 1937USnot in their usual nameAmerican stand-up comedian (1937–2008)
- Dennis Titob. 1940USAmerican businessman
- Dennis Ritchieb. 1941USAmerican computer scientist, co-inventor of the Unix operating system and the C programming language (1941–2011)
- Dennis Raderb. 1945USAmerican serial killer (born 1945)
- Denis Mukwegeb. 1955CDCongolese gynecologist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
- Denis Villeneuveb. 1967CACanadian film director and screenwriter (born 1967)
- Dennis Bergkampb. 1969NLDutch association football player (born 1969)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 143 sources across 73 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 76K | #574 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 67K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 66K | #456 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 26K | #1,315 |
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 20K | #61 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 13K | #166 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 6.7K | #186 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #1,315 |
Reference works 10
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Where does the name Denis come from?
- Short form of Dionysius; used in Ireland to anglicise Donagh. Popularity has sharply decreased in recent times. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Denis a male or female name?
- Denis is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Denis have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 million people named Денис in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Denis most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Denis is densest in Moldova — about 1 in 165 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Denis mean?
- In French, a male given name, equivalent to English Dennis; originally given in honor of a third century bishop of Paris, the patron saint of France
- What are other forms of the name Denis?
- In the etymology graph, Dennis, Dionisio and Dion are forms of the same name in other languages; Denny is a recorded short or pet form.
- How do you pronounce Denis?
- A machine transcription gives /dəni/ (IPA) for French.
- How common is the name Denis?
- In Moldova, the national register counted 20,408 people named Denis, about 1 in 165 residents.
- How common is Denis compared with other names?
- In Russia, Denis is the 36th most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Denis?
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/denisThe 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, “Denis” — the 36th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.