Desire
The girl's name Desire has been in the national records since 1915, with 5,468 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 2,239th. About 5,300 Desires are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Desire boys named Desire
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,468
- Estimated living today
- 5,300
- Median age today
- 24
- Peak year
- 2008
- Best rank
- 1,437th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,239th
- First recorded
- 1915
- Girls / boys
- 5,336 / 132
How old the living Desires are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,468 babies given the name since 1915, about 5,300 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 1,900 of them are children and 40 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 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 Desires
- Désiré Doué (born 2005)French footballer
- Désiré Tsarahazana (born 1954)Catholic cardinal
- Désiré Mercier (1851–1926)Roman-Catholic Cardinal
- Desiré Wilson (born 1953)South African racing driver
- Desire Oparanozie (born 1993)Nigerian footballer
- Désiré Nisard (1806–1888)French author and literary critic
- Désiré Charnay (1828–1915)French archaeologist and photographer
- Désiré Bourgeois (1908–1996)Belgian footballer
People named Desire with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Desire is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Desire is most concentrated in Florida (2.6×), California (2.4×), New York (2.1×), Illinois (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2008
The most popular girls’ names the year Desire peaked:
Desire elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Désiré +1 spelling | 18,885 | 58th |
| Italy girls | Desire | 2,820 | — |
| England and Wales girls | Desire | 147 | 1,977th |
| France girls | Désiré +1 spelling | 50 | 1,675th |
| England and Wales boys | Desire | 31 | 2,804th |
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.
Desire: rank by region
In 2016, Desire was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Desire | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Desire 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 | Desiré +2 spellings | 47 | 517 |
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.
Where Desire lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 3,453 women called Desire were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cádiz | Desire | 270 | 0.421 | 263 |
| Ceuta | Desire | 17 | 0.410 | 376 |
| Sevilla | Desire | 356 | 0.351 | 275 |
| Málaga | Desire | 285 | 0.311 | 320 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Desire | 167 | 0.301 | 381 |
| Granada | Desire | 133 | 0.277 | 338 |
Listed in 49 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 3 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Desire 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.