De
De is a boy's name that peaked in 1992, when it was the 1,804th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. It has not appeared in the national data since 2011. About 1,100 Des are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 34.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named De boys named De
Girls and boys called De
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
De crossed from girls to boys in 1985, and has stayed there for 13 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 81% boys, and in 2001 it was 68%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 14 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,322
- Estimated living today
- 1,100
- Median age today
- 34
- Peak year
- 1992
- Best rank
- 1,804th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1914
- Girls / boys
- 641 / 681
How old the living Des are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,322 babies given the name since 1914, about 1,100 are alive — 86 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1991 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Des
- Zhu De (1886–1976)Marshal of the People's Republic of China (1886－1976)
- Gan De (400 BC–400 BC)4th-century BC Chinese astronomer and astrologer
- De Lacy Evans (1787–1870)British Army general
- De Lafontaine (1655–1738)French ballet dancer
People named De with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where De is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, De is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (21.0×), Virginia (5.4×), New York (4.6×), Wisconsin (3.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1992
The most popular boys’ names the year De peaked:
De elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | De +1 spelling | 76 | 2,941st |
| France girls | De | 5 | 2,657th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
De among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | De +1 spelling | — | 77 |
| Finland boys | De +1 spelling | 5 | 45 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
De against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.