girls:
5.2k births since 1955
#2344 (59th percentile)
boys:
106 births since 1915
#4480 (2nd percentile)
overall:
5.3k births since 1915
#3764 (51st percentile)
The name Desire is the #3,764 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 5,271 recorded births since 1915. This represents the 51.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 51.4% of all names). For girls, it ranks #2,344 (59.0% percentile) for all time with 5,165 births since 1955. For boys, it ranks #4,480 (2.2% percentile) for all time with 106 births since 1915.
Desire first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1915 (1915 for boys and 1955 for girls). Birth data for Desire is available in 71 out of the 109 years between 1915 and 2023 (68 years for girls and 13 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Desire has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 98.0% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 86.7% of babies named Desire were girls. Interestingly, until around 1955, the name was more popular for boys (100.0% boys from 1915 to 1954), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (98.4% girls from 1955 to 2023).
For girls, Desire reached its peak popularity in 1992, achieving the 16.8% percentile (ranked #715) with 74 births per million. The name was most common in 2008, with 79 births per million (ranked 16.2% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2020, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Desire ranks #861 for girls (9.1% percentile) with 52 births per million, which is 66.1% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Desire reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 1.0% percentile (ranked #902) with 8 births per million. The name was most common in 1915, with 10 births per million (ranked 0.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2018, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Desire ranks #902 for boys (1.0% percentile) with 8 births per million, which is 74.8% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Desire".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Desire.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Desire", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Desire.
Our model has identified 7 different pronunciations for the name Desire. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 54.8% confident that Desire is pronounced as dih-ZAI-er, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is deh-SIRE, at 9.5% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Desire? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Desire. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Desire, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like D IH0 Z AY1 ER0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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