Dejah
Feminine
Dejah is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,176 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Dejah has an author and a date. Edgar Rice Burroughs invented Dejah Thoris, princess of Mars, for a serial published in 1912. But the American curve does not follow him. It rises in the 1990s alongside Deja, Dejanae and Dejour, and peaks in 1999, eighty-seven years late and in the wrong company. A name can have a documented origin that its own numbers ignore.
How old is the name Dejah?
Dejah first appears in US birth records in 1973 — 52 years ago. The typical Dejah alive today was born around 2001, making them about 24 years old. About 3,100 people named Dejah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dejah most popular?
Dejah peaked in 1999, reaching #670 nationally. Today it ranks #7885, 7,215 places below that high. See the whole 1999 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Deja to Dejah
Our story of Dejah
Our reading is that Dejah is a useful warning about attributing names to books. A documented invention is tempting: it gives a date, an author and a story, and it is the kind of fact a name page likes to carry. But the test is the curve. If a book made the name, the numbers should move when the book does, and here they do not. Burroughs published in 1912 and again through the 1920s; the name is absent from the data for most of the twentieth century. It appears in force in the 1990s, in exactly the years and exactly the company of the De- prefix names, which were built from a productive American pattern with no connection to Mars. The honest reading is that the same seven letters were arrived at twice, once by a novelist and once by a naming system, and that the second arrival is the one that produced the children.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Two unrelated sources produce this spelling. Burroughs coined Dejah Thoris in 1912 and left no derivation. Separately, French deja, already, gave American English the phrase deja vu, and the De- prefix family of the 1980s and 1990s produced Deja, Dejai and Dejah independently of any book. The 1999 peak sits squarely in the second pattern, so for most American families the literary origin is a coincidence rather than a source.
How the name formed
- Deja
- Dejah
Related forms: Deja
Pronouncing Dejah
DAY-zhah
Two syllables, stress usually on the first. The middle consonant is the zh of measure, which English has no single letter for. Some families say DEE-jah with a hard j, and that reading is common enough to require checking.
Nicknames for Dejah
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
- 1973
- Most girls named
- 1999341 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #670reached in 1999
- Change vs 2024
- −13.3%13 in 2025, from 15
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.
Dejah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Deja in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas.
Dejahs among us
people named Dejah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 123,636 born in 2025 was named Dejah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Dejah
- #7885
- Dejah on the 2025 chart
- #893
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Dejah went to 13 girls in 2025, but Deja 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 — 6,992 places above the chart.
- Deja54
- Dejah13
About 1 girl in 23,989 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 123,636 for Dejah 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 Margarett test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Dejah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Margarett climbed just as high around 1932, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Margarett's path sketches the road Dejah is walking now.
Dejah 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
Dejah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Dejah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The sound is instantly familiar from the French phrase.
- Dee is a ready short form.
- The name is short, balanced and easy to write.
- The zh and hard-j pronunciations both circulate.
- Deja without the h is more common.
- The phrase deja vu will be mentioned by strangers.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Dejah
Feminine · #7885 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Dejahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,100 people named Dejah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Dejah?
- Dejah is one of 2 recorded spellings. Deja is the more common one — 54 births in 2025 against 13 for Dejah.
- How popular is the name Dejah in 2025?
- Dejah ranks #7885 among US girl names in 2025, with 13 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Dejah?
- About 1 in every 123,636 US girls born in 2025 was named Dejah — 13 in all.
- Will my child share the name Dejah with classmates?
- Dejah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Dejah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ola#7885 · Loula#7885 · Consuelo#7885 · Santa#7885 · Florentina#7885 · Marty#7885 · Jaye#7885 · Dollie#7885
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Dejah? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Dejah and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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