Dorothy
Meaning
gift of God
Goes by Dee, Dolly, Dot, Dottie, and 1 more
Famously borne by Dorothy Hodgkin, chemist and Nobel laureate who advanced X-ray crystallography.
The story
Dorothy is Greek, Dorothea, gift of God, the same two words as Theodora in reverse order. Around the turn of the twentieth century it was everywhere, one of the reigning American girls' names of the 1900s and 1910s, filling classrooms decades before a certain Kansas farm girl put on the ruby slippers. By the time the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz made Dorothy Gale immortal, the name was already sliding, and not even Judy Garland could stop it; it fell steadily for half a century, reaching its quietest stretch late in the century. Now the pendulum has begun its slow return. Like Hazel and Eleanor before it, Dorothy has been creeping back upward in recent years, a great-grandmother name ready for new hands. Gift of God, said the Greeks. Somewhere over the rainbow, said everyone after 1939.
Dorothy's name family
One shared root links 4 names across 2 languages.
Shared root: from Greek Dorothea "gift of God"; the same elements as Theodora, stacked the other way around
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Dorothy peaked in the 1900s and the 1910s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
572 people · the #12,195 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 333,333 · median age 67
Among people named Dorothy living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1940s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 25 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Dorothy
People given the name Dorothy in the United States span the generations: the middle half were born anywhere from 1940 to 1969. Age is the one thing the name won't tell you.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Dorothy deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Dorothy 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 Dorothy fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Nicknames for Dorothy · Names of geniuses and inventors · Iconic movie character names
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