Desire
given name · Latin script
Meaning: To want; to wish for earnestly
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dizaɪɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Desire is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Burundi than in any other country. In Togo it is the 42nd most common given name.
- CMCameroon≈1 in 1.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- BIBurundi≈1 in 678
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 1.8K
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.
- Burundi (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 209 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 678 (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Burundi, 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 Desiré in SE Sweden and Désiré in TG Togo.
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)
To want; to wish for earnestly.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Desire 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BI Burundi | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 678 | 14 | — | 7 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Desire | 34 |
| CM Cameroon | #74 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Desire | 23 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #335 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.5K | 10 | Desire | 17 |
| US United States | — | 5,162 | 1 in 64K | 4.8K | Desire | 157 |
| TG Togo | #42 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 1 | Désiré | 10 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,259 | 1 in 8.1K | 1.3K | Desiré | 9 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Journal Officiel — Liste definitive des candidats (legislatives 2024); CENI — Liste nominative definitive des candidats deputes 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)
Desire is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, the desired one
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In Romanian, thickening
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Basque, nahi
as a wordTrask, Etymological Dictionary of Basque (2008 posthumous draft)
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)
- Joseph Désiré Courtb. 1797FRpainter (1797-1865)
- Gustave Courbetb. 1819FRnot in their usual nameFrench painter (1819–1877)
- Édouard Branlyb. 1844FRnot in their usual nameFrench physicist (1844-1940)
- Désiré-Émile Inghelbrechtb. 1880FRFrench conductor and composer (1880–1965)
- Abel Bonnardb. 1883FRnot in their usual nameFrench writer, poet and politician
- Désiré Defauwb. 1885BEconductor, violinist
- Fernandelb. 1903FRnot in their usual nameFrench actor and singer (1903-1971)
- Dési Bouterseb. 1945SRnot in their usual nameleader of Suriname (1980–1987, 2010–2020)
- Desire Oparanozieb. 1993NGNigerian footballer
- Désiré Douéb. 2005FRFrench footballer (born 2005)
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 63 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.8K | #3,823 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 356 | #3,823 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 178 | #5,664 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 82 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 27 | — |
| BI Burundi | CENI — Liste nominative definitive des candidats deputes 2025 | 2025 | 14 | #3 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 13 | — |
| TG Togo | Journal Officiel — Liste definitive des candidats (legislatives 2024) | 2024 | 1 | #23 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Desire mean, and where does it come from?
- To want; to wish for earnestly. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Desire a male or female name?
- Desire 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.
- How do you pronounce Desire?
- A machine transcription gives /dizaɪɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Desire have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Desire in Burundi, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Desire?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,162 people named Desire in 2020, about 1 in 64 thousand residents.
- How common is Desire compared with other names?
- In Togo, Desire is the 42nd most common given name of 1,075 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Desire?
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/desireThe 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, “Desire” — the 42nd most common given name in Togo. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.