Theodora
Theodora reached its high-water mark in 2022 at number 688, and has been recorded 12,703 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 725th. About 7,700 Theodoras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Theodora boys named Theodora
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 12,703
- Estimated living today
- 7,700
- Median age today
- 26
- Peak year
- 2022
- Best rank
- 688th
- Rank in 2025
- 725th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 12,654 / 49
How old the living Theodoras are
born that year still alive today
Of the 12,703 babies given the name since 1880, about 7,700 are alive — 60 in every hundred. Roughly 3,400 of them are children and 2,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 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 Ancient Greek
From the feminine form of Theodore.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Theodoras
- Theodora (500–548)Byzantine empress from 527 to 548
- Theodora Porphyrogenita (984–1056)Byzantine empress regnant
- Theodora (815–867)9th-century Byzantine empress, wife of Theophilos
- Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark (born 1983)Danish-Greek princess
- Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark (1906–1969)Greco-Danish princess (1906-1969); sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
- Theodora of TrebizondEmpress regnant of Trebizond, nun (1253-1285)
- Theodora Kroeber (1897–1979)American anthropologist
- Theodora Kantakuzini (born 1332)Wife of Orhan Ghazi
People named Theodora with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Theodora is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Theodora is most concentrated in New York (3.2×), New Jersey (2.1×), Pennsylvania (1.9×), Massachusetts (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2022
The most popular girls’ names the year Theodora peaked:
Theodora elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Theodora +1 spelling | 1,710 | 301st |
| England and Wales girls | Theodora | 1,573 | 340th |
| Switzerland girls | Theodora +1 spelling | 89 | 577th |
| Belgium girls | Theodora +1 spelling | 69 | 856th |
| Ireland girls | Theodora | 66 | 396th |
| Scotland girls | Theodora | 43 | 429th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Theodora | 3 | 424th |
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.
Theodora: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Theodora | 54 | 0.004% | 494th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Théodora | 21 | 0.005% | 512th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Theodora | 11 | 0.003% | 562nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Theodora | 3 | 0.005% | 189th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Theodora is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Theodora: rank by region
In 2025, Theodora was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels | Theodora | 244 | 5 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Theodora appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (244th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – 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.
Theodora by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 6 | 555th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Theodora 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Theodora | 26,493 | 96,312 |
| the Netherlands boys | Theodora | — | 1,257 |
| Finland girls | Theodora | 24 | 84 |
Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 1,257 who carry it, fewer than five go by it.
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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
Theodora 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.