Despina
Feminine · “lady”
Despina is the Greek word for the lady of a house, carried into English exactly as Greek speakers say it: four syllables with the weight in the middle. It came to America with the Greek emigration and has stayed close to those families ever since, strongest where their churches are.
How old is the name Despina?
Despina first appears in US birth records in 1914 — 111 years ago. The typical Despina alive today was born around 1976, making them about 49 years old. About 1,200 people named Despina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Despina most popular?
Despina peaked in 1931, reaching #1941 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 13,001 places below that high. See the whole 1931 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Despoina to Despina
The story of Despina
The word comes down from classical Greek, where the despoina ran the household that the despotes owned. Byzantine Greek promoted it: the daughters and wives of rulers were addressed as despoina, and in the Orthodox church the title settled on the Virgin, which is how an ordinary noun became a name a Greek family could give a daughter. It traveled outside Greek once, memorably — Mozart's Cosi fan tutte gives the name to its sharp-eyed maid, and that is where most non-Greek listeners have met it. In Greece a granddaughter is very often named for her grandmother, so the name reaches America in family clusters rather than in fashions, and it has kept its Greek shape the whole way. No Anglicized respelling ever grew up beside it.
Meaning
lady; mistress of the house
Greek despoina is an ordinary word before it is a name. It means the mistress of a household and, by extension, a lady of rank, and it is the feminine of despotes, the master of the house — the word English later flattened into despot with all the domestic sense stripped out. Ancient Arcadia used Despoina as the title of a goddess whose real name was not spoken outside her mysteries, and Greek Christians later used it of the Virgin. The name is that word, unchanged.
How the name formed
- Despoina
- Despina
Related forms: Δέσποινα · Despoina · Despina · Despina
Pronouncing Despina
des-PEE-na
Greek puts the stress on the second syllable and keeps the i long: des-PEE-na. Readers meeting it on paper often try DES-pi-na, with the weight at the front, so the correction gets made early and then rarely again.
Nicknames for Despina
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
- 197636 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1941reached in 1931
- Change vs 2023
- −64.3%5 in 2025, from 14
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.
Despina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Δέσποινα in Greek — transliteration
- Despoina in Greek — spelling variant
- Despina in Romanian — same name
- Despina in Serbian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York.
Despinas among us
people named Despina are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Despina
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Carlena test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Despina's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Carlena climbed just as high around 1910, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Carlena's path sketches the road Despina is walking now.
Despina 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
Despina beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Despina in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It says its own origin the moment it is spoken; there is no version of this name that hides where it comes from.
- Spelling and sound match cleanly — nothing silent, nothing doubled, no letter doing unexpected work.
- Comes with a short form at each end: Dina for English, Pepi for Greek.
- Four syllables ending in a vowel, which balances a short surname well.
- Almost everyone puts the stress in the wrong place on first reading, so the name needs to be heard before it can be said.
- English ears catch despot in the first syllable before they catch anything else. The two words do share a root, and a school-age child will eventually be told so.
- Outside Greek-American families it reads as unmistakably Greek — an asset in some rooms and an explanation in others.
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What they receive
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Despina
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Despinas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Despina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Despina in 2025?
- Despina ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Despina?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Despina — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Despina with classmates?
- Despina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Despina
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Despina? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Despina and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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