Dorothy
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Dorothy is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 44th most common given name. Recorded meaning: A female given name from Ancient Greek.
- CNChina≈1 in 426(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 444
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 468
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #197 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 557 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 426 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,300,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
A female given name from Ancient Greek.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dorothy 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈3,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 426 | — | Dorothy | 45 |
| US United States | #88 | 304,932 | 1 in 1.1K | 305K | Dorothy | 557 |
| GB United Kingdom | #97 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 515 | 7 | Dorothy | 233 |
| IT Italy | #168 | ≈79,000 est. | ≈1 in 792 | 81 | Dorothy | 55 |
| EG Egypt | #556 | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Dorothy | 22 |
| IE Ireland | #69 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 444 | — | Dorothy | 77 |
| SG Singapore | #44 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 534 | — | Dorothy | 91 |
| NZ New Zealand | #92 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 468 | 13 | Dorothy | 96 |
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; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Dorothy is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Dorothy är en engelsk form av → Dorotea. Namnet blev populärt genom storfilmen Trollkarlen från Oz (1939) där huvudrollen heter Dorothy.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Usual English form of DOROTHEA . The name was not used in the Middle Ages, but was taken up in the 16th century and became common thereafter. In Scotland it has been used as an Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Diorbhail , also Anglicized as DEVORGILLA . Short form: Dot. Pet forms: Dottie, Dodie, Dolly .
as a word
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)
- Dorothy Parkerb. 1893USAmerican poet, short story writer, critic and satirist (1893-1967)
- Dorothy L. Sayersb. 1893GBEnglish crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer (1893-1957)
- Dorothy Hodgkinb. 1910GBBritish chemist
- Dorothy Vaughanb. 1910USAfrican-American mathematician
- Dorothy Lamourb. 1914USAmerican actress and singer (1914-1996)
- Dorothy McGuireb. 1916USAmerican actress (1916-2001)
- Dorothy Dandridgeb. 1922USAmerican actress and singer (1922–1965)
- Dorothy Maloneb. 1924USAmerican actress (1924-2018)
- Vivian Maierb. 1926USnot in their usual nameFrench-American photographer (1926–2009)
- Faye Dunawayb. 1941USnot in their usual nameAmerican 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 80 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 305K | #166 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 743 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 384 | #166 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2022 | 10 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 7 | #231 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1989 | 6 | — |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 4 | #1,908 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2022 | 4 | #625 |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Dorothy mean, and where does it come from?
- A female given name from Ancient Greek. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Dorothy a male or female name?
- Dorothy 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.
- What are other forms of the name Dorothy?
- In the etymology graph, Doreen, Dorothea and Dorota are forms of the same name in other languages; Dolly, Dottie and Dory are recorded short or pet forms.
- How common is the name Dorothy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 304,932 people named Dorothy in 2020, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Dorothy compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Dorothy is the 44th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Dorothy have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.3 million people named Dorothy in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dorothy.
What do you want to know about Dorothy?
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/dorothyThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Dorothy” — the 44th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.