Demaris
Feminine
Demaris is given to both — 1,018 girls and 286 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Damaris is named once in the New Testament, in a single line, and nothing else about her is recorded anywhere. Paul preaches in Athens, is mostly laughed at, and two people believe him — a man of the council and a woman called Damaris. Then the text moves on and she is never mentioned again.
How old is the name Demaris?
Demaris first appears in US birth records in 1914 — 111 years ago. The typical Demaris alive today was born around 1957, making them about 68 years old. About 700 people named Demaris are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Demaris most popular?
Demaris peaked in 1936, reaching #1801 nationally. See the whole 1936 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From a Greek name of unexplained origin to Demaris
The story of Demaris
The scene is one of the odder ones in the New Testament. Paul is taken to the Areopagus, the council hill, and gives a speech built entirely out of Greek philosophy and a local altar inscription — no scripture, no Jewish argument, just an appeal to what the Athenians already believed. It goes badly: the crowd is polite until he mentions resurrection, at which point most of them leave. Two names survive out of that afternoon, and one of them is a woman's. English took the name up after the Reformation, when families went looking for scriptural names nobody else had.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The Greek name has no agreed derivation. A word for a heifer has been proposed, and so has a word for a wife, and neither is convincing. What makes the name interesting is not the etymology but the mention: she is the only woman named among the Athenian converts, in a chapter about a city that prided itself on argument, and the fact that she is named at all suggests she was known to the people the account was written for.
How the name formed
- a Greek name of unexplained origin
- named once among the converts at Athens
- taken up by English families after the Reformation
- carried to New England in the seventeenth century
- Demaris appears in the American record in the 1910s
Related forms: Damaris · Damaris
Pronouncing Demaris
DEM-uh-riss
Three syllables with the stress at the front. Some families put it on the middle, duh-MAR-iss, which the spelling permits equally well.
Nicknames for Demaris
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
- 1914
- Most girls named
- 193618 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1801reached in 1936
- Change vs 2011
- +14.3%8 in 2019, from 7
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.
Demaris in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Damaris in Greek — spelling variant
- Damaris in English — spelling variant
Demariss among us
people named Demaris 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
Demaris 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 a genuine scriptural name that almost nobody else uses.
- Maris is available inside it and is a complete name of its own.
- It works for a child of either sex, and the record carries it on both sides.
- The stress placement is genuinely unsettled.
- Damaris is the standard spelling and this one will be corrected.
- There is no meaning to give her and no agreed derivation.
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Demaris
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Demariss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Demaris are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Demaris in 2025?
- Demaris is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Demaris with classmates?
- Demaris will almost certainly be the only one in school.
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Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Demaris? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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