Dexter
Meaning
occupational surname, 'one who dyes' in Old English; coincides with Latin dexter, 'right-handed, skilled'
Goes by Dex
The story
Dexter comes from an occupational surname meaning "one who dyes" in Old English, says Behind the Name, and it coincides, by accident of alphabet, with the Latin word dexter, "right-handed, skilled". The American record is a steady century: about 510 boys in the 1910s, about 1,460 in the 1940s, about 3,500 in the 1950s, about 4,900 in the 1960s, and thousands every decade from the 1940s onward without a break. Then the late surprise: about 7,200 boys in the 2010s, a full century after the line began, with about 2,600 so far this decade. A dyer by trade in Old English, skillful by coincidence in Latin, and a hundred-year-old line that jumped again, without warning, a hundred years after it began.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Dexter peaked in the 2010s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
304 people · the #18,878 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 12
Among people named Dexter living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2000s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 57 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Dexter deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Dexter truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Dexter fits with your family’s names and surname.
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