Derek
Masculine · “Ruler of the people”
Derek is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 239,060 boys against 909 girls since 1880. See Derek as a girl name
Derek is what is left of a very long Germanic name after a thousand years of wear. Its relatives in other languages are so unlike it that nobody would guess they were the same word.
How old is the name Derek?
Derek first appears in US birth records in 1924 — 101 years ago. The typical Derek alive today was born around 1987, making them about 38 years old. About 225,000 people named Derek are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Derek most popular?
Derek peaked in 1980, reaching #50 nationally. Today it ranks #284, 234 places below that high. See the whole 1980 chart.
Derek appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Theodoric to Derek
The story of Derek
The king who first made the name matter ruled Italy for thirty years and could not, by one ancient account, write. Theodoric the Ostrogoth governed Rome's former territory better than its last emperors had, kept the Senate, repaired the aqueducts and left a mausoleum roofed with a single stone — and when documents required his signature, the story goes, he used a stencil plate with the first four letters cut into it and traced his name through the holes. The detail may be a hostile invention. It has stuck to him for fifteen hundred years all the same, because it captures something true about the arrangement: a Gothic soldier running a Latin state, signing in a language he governed in and could not read.
Meaning
Ruler of the people
The elements are the word for a people or tribe and the word for rule. The compound has been worn down differently in every language that carried it, which is why the meaning is settled and the family resemblance is invisible.
How the name formed
- Theodoric
- Diederik
- Derek
Related forms: Dirk · Dietrich · Thierry · Teodorico
Pronouncing Derek
DER-ik
Two syllables, stress at the front. Britain says DE-rik and America often DARE-ik, and both are established.
Nicknames for Derek
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
- 1924
- Most boys named
- 19898,365 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #50reached in 1980
- Change vs 2023
- −4.0%1,191 in 2025, from 1,240
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.
Derek in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dirk in Dutch — same name
- Dietrich in German — same name
- Thierry in French — same name
- Teodorico in Italian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Dereks among us
people named Derek are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,434 born in 2025 was named Derek
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Derek
- #284
- Derek on the 2025 chart
- #226
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Derek went to 1,191 boys in 2025, but Dereck is the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 1,592, which makes it the 226th most-given boys’ name of the year — 58 places above the chart.
- Derek1,191
- Dereck396
and 1 rarer spelling.
About 1 boy in 1,073 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,434 for Derek 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 Leroy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Derek's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Leroy climbed just as high around 1907, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Leroy's path sketches the road Derek is walking now.
Derek peaked long ago yet still holds steady — names that survive their own wave usually settle into quiet, durable classics.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Derek is headed
Derek should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
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.
Derek beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Derek in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is short, plain and impossible to mispronounce in English.
- The meaning is settled and easy to explain.
- It has genuine relatives across northern Europe, however unlike they look.
- Derrick and Deric are both common and his will be written as one of them.
- The spelling is recorded for both sexes, though the boys hold nearly all of it.
- The name belongs strongly to one American stretch of decades.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Derek
Masculine · #284 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Dereks are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 225,000 people named Derek are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Derek?
- Derek is the most-used spelling in US records — 1,191 of the 1,592 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Dereck.
- How popular is the name Derek in 2025?
- Derek ranks #284 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,191 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Derek?
- About 1 in every 1,434 US boys born in 2025 was named Derek — 1,191 in all.
- Will my child share the name Derek with classmates?
- Derek will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Derek
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Colt#285 · Tobias#283 · Jensen#282 · Kash#286 · Cash#287 · Atticus#281 · Maximiliano#280 · Lukas#288
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Derek? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Derek and another name?
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Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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