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Dorotea

Girls' name

English equivalent of Dorothy

Dorotea has been given to 130 babies in the U.S. since 1896. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1922, with 11 recorded.

Babies named Dorotea, 2016

1 in 734,000

Dorotea over time, 1880–2025

Girls
05101518801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Dorotea: meaning, origin, and history

English equivalent of Dorothy

Ancient Greek

What Dorotea means

Dorotea is a English equivalent of Dorothy.

Origin, language, and formation

Dorotea is used in Faroese, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and Swedish. Its origins include Ancient Greek.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Dorothy.

Pronunciation and spelling

In Italian, Dorotea is pronounced /do.roˈtɛ.a/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 130 girls were recorded with the name Dorotea between 1896 and 2016. Its highest annual count was 11 in 1922; its best national rank was #1,641 in 1896.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Dorotea?

Dorotea had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2016, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2016
1 in 734,000
5 of 3,669,531 births
Among girls only
1 in 354,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2016
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
508,706 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Dorotea sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2016 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 508,706 children born in 2016 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Dorotea. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Doroteas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Dorotea was born before 1924 — so the typical Dorotea is around 101 today.

Median birth year
1924
About 101 years old
Biggest decade
1920s
27.7% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
3.8%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
37
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1920s — 27.7% of all recorded uses (36).

Is Dorotea rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1922 (11)
Years since peak
103
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
37.1% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,641
1896

Spellings of Dorotea

Dorotea is not the most common spelling — Dorothy is, with 94.6% against Dorotea's 0.01%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Dorotea is used

Across 1910–2025, Dorotea was most concentrated in Texas — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 438,604 across all states with data.

00 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Texas1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Dorotea has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Dorotea around the world

Where Dorotea ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2021–2025
    #5,927
    in 2025
  • France
    2023–2023
    #6,512
    in 2023
  • South Australia
    1947–1969
    #731
    in 1969

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Dorotea by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#1,641
1896
Peak year
1922
11 that year
First recorded
1896
Last recorded
2016
All-time count
130
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Dorotea

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

DorinneDorlisaDorleenDorthiaDoranneDorianaDorreenDorethyDorathaDoralynDorreneDorellaDoraineDorthieDorsaDoreenaDorissaDoretteDorothiaDorrineDoriannaDorethiaDorlisDoriane

Sibling names for Dorotea

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Dorotea

Top names of 1922, Dorotea's peak yearThe 1920s in fullOther names that peaked in 1896Girls' names starting with DTheodore Variations & Nicknames