Desmond
The boy's name Desmond has been in the national records since 1904, with 40,264 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 376th. About 38,000 Desmonds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Desmond boys named Desmond
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 40,264
- Estimated living today
- 38,000
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 1992
- Best rank
- 264th
- Rank in 2025
- 376th
- First recorded
- 1904
- Girls / boys
- 233 / 40,031
How old the living Desmonds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 40,264 babies given the name since 1904, about 38,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 16,000 of them are children and 550 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2002 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
From Irish Ó Deasmhumhnaigh.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Desmonds
- Desmond Tutu (1931–2021)South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner
- Desmond Doss (1919–2006)American solder, pacifist, and combat medic; recipient of the Purple Heart medal, recipient of the Medal of Honor (1919–2007) Un gran hombre en la vida militar.
- Desmond Llewelyn (1914–1999)British actor
- Desmond Dekker (1941–2006)Jamaican ska singer-songwriter
- Desmond Harrington (born 1976)American actor
- Desmond Child (born 1953)American songwriter and producer
- Desmond Hoyte (1929–2002)President of Guyana, politician, lawyer
- Desmond Connell (1926–2017)Catholic cardinal
People named Desmond with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Desmond is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Desmond is most concentrated in Louisiana (2.1×), South Carolina (1.9×), Georgia (1.9×), Mississippi (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1992
The most popular boys’ names the year Desmond peaked:
Desmond elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Desmond | 2,731 | 45th |
| England and Wales boys | Desmond | 321 | 1,133rd |
| New Zealand boys | Desmond | 224 | 90th |
| Scotland boys | Desmond | 146 | 121st |
| France boys | Desmond | 100 | 3,075th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Desmond | 23 | 218th |
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.
Desmond 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 boys | Desmond | 13 | 36 |
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
Desmond 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.