Girl · Old Irish
Deirdre
Say it: DEER-druh
Meaning
Uncertain. The Old Irish form is Derdriu; the popular gloss 'sorrowful' comes from her tragic story, not from the name, and other proposals are unproven.
Disputedsharp disagreement, or a popular meaning that is not supported.
Revived as a given name after the Deirdre plays of Yeats and Synge in the early 1900s.
Its wave through time
A fashion of the 1960s
In the United States
- 16,772 babies given this name since 1921
- At its height in 1961, about 1 in 2,500 girls
- 15 babies in 2020
Through the ages
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Derdriu
Famous bearers
- Deirdre of the Sorrows, heroine of the Ulster Cycle
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Well-known works of literature
- National census records of the 19th and 20th centuries
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.