Debra
Masculine · “Bee”
Debra is given to girls far more often — 550,695 girls against 1,146 boys since 1880. See Debra as a girl name
Debra removes the unstressed vowel from Deborah and became commoner than the full form for a while. That is unusual: a contraction normally stays a variant, and this one overtook its parent in the American record and held the position for most of a decade.
How old is the name Debra?
Debra first appears in US birth records in 1949 — 76 years ago. The typical Debra alive today was born around 1959, making them about 66 years old. About 900 people named Debra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Debra most popular?
Debra peaked in 1954, reaching #762 nationally. See the whole 1954 chart.
Where it comes from
From Devorah to Debra
The story of Debra
Honey was the only sweetener anybody in that part of the world had, and beekeeping was an industry. Excavation at a site in the Jordan valley has turned up an apiary of the ninth century before Christ with rows of cylindrical clay hives stacked in tiers, capable of holding well over a million bees and producing honey and wax on a commercial scale; the bees in it, identified from remains, appear to have been imported from Anatolia because they were a better strain. That is an organized agricultural operation three thousand years old. A name meaning bee, in a culture that was farming them at that scale, is not a whimsical choice.
Meaning
Bee
Hebrew devorah, the word for a bee, used directly as a name. Ancient Hebrew naming used animals freely and the connection is not metaphorical: a bee was a bee. The contraction removes the vowel between the b and the r, which is silent in ordinary English speech anyway.
How the name formed
- Devorah
- Deborah
- Debra
Related forms: Devorah · Debora
Pronouncing Debra
DEB-ruh
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The full spelling has three when said carefully and two in ordinary speech, which is exactly why the contraction works and why it caught on.
Nicknames for Debra
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1949
- Most boys named
- 195690 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #762reached in 1954
- Change vs 1983
- −44.4%5 in 1984, from 9
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Debra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Devorah in Hebrew — transliteration
- Debora in Italian — same name
Debras among us
people named Debra are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Debra sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is shorter than the full name and loses nothing that is said.
- Deb and Debbie are two short forms in different registers.
- The spoken name is completely established and never needs repeating.
- The record carries it for boys in small numbers, so it is not quite an absolute signal.
- It is very strongly dated to the middle of the last century in American ears.
- Debbie takes over for most bearers and belongs to a specific generation.
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What they receive
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Debra
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Debras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Debra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Debra in 2025?
- Debra is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Debra with classmates?
- Debra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
David#35 · Daniel#22 · Donald#690 · Dennis#707 · Douglas#807 · Dylan#41 · Danny#628 · Dale#1409
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Debra? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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