Deja
Feminine · “already”
Deja is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 16,274 girls against 86 boys since 1880.
Deja comes from a French adverb that English borrowed inside a phrase. Déjà means already, and English met it in déjà vu — the sensation of having been here before.
How old is the name Deja?
Deja first appears in US birth records in 1962 — 63 years ago. The typical Deja alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 16,000 people named Deja are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Deja most popular?
Deja peaked in 1996, reaching #182 nationally. Today it ranks #3028, 2,846 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From déjà to Deja
The story of Deja
American naming of the later twentieth century drew freely on French words and phrases, particularly where they carried an air of something known but not quite placed. Deja belongs to that group. It appears in American records from the 1970s and rose sharply through the early 1980s, peaking around 1982 — a name whose whole history is contained in a couple of decades and whose meaning is a word most English speakers know only from one phrase.
Meaning
already
From the French déjà, 'already', a compound of dès, 'from', and jà, an old form of 'now'. The phrase déjà vu, 'already seen', entered English psychology in the late nineteenth century and became general vocabulary in the twentieth, which is how the adverb became available as a name.
How the name formed
- déjà
- Deja
Related forms: Déjà · Dejah · Daeja
Pronouncing Deja
DAY-zhuh
Two syllables, stress on the first. The j is the soft French zh, which English speakers know from the phrase and reproduce without difficulty.
Nicknames for Deja
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
- 1962
- Most girls named
- 19961,638 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #182reached in 1996
- Change vs 2024
- −6.9%54 in 2025, from 58
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.
Deja in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Déjà in French — related form
- Dejah in English — spelling variant
- Daeja in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, California.
Dejas among us
people named Deja are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 29,764 born in 2025 was named Deja
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Deja
- #3028
- Deja on the 2025 chart
- #893
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Deja went to 54 girls in 2025, but Dejah is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 67, which makes it the 893rd most-given girls’ name of the year — 2,135 places above the chart.
- Deja54
- Dejah13
About 1 girl in 23,989 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 29,764 for Deja itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Johnnie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Deja's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Johnnie climbed just as high around 1928, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Johnnie's path sketches the road Deja is walking now.
Deja sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Deja is headed
Deja is easing off slowly — about 15% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Deja beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Deja in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The soft zh sound is uncommon in English names and makes it immediately distinctive.
- The meaning is transparent to anyone who knows the phrase, which is nearly everyone.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- It is half of a fixed phrase, and many listeners will complete it silently.
- Several spellings are in use, so the written form has to be given.
- The name is closely dated to the 1980s and 1990s.
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What they receive
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Deja
Feminine · #3028 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Dejas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 16,000 people named Deja are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Deja?
- Deja is the most-used spelling in US records — 54 of the 67 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Dejah.
- How popular is the name Deja in 2025?
- Deja ranks #3028 among US girl names in 2025, with 54 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Deja?
- About 1 in every 29,764 US girls born in 2025 was named Deja — 54 in all.
- Will my child share the name Deja with classmates?
- Deja will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Deja
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Minnie#3028 · Boston#3028 · Joann#3028 · Alethea#3028 · Mallie#3028 · Auria#3028 · Adria#3028 · Daila#3028
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Deja? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Deja and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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