Doloris
Feminine · “sorrows”
The Spanish word is a plural and this spelling breaks it. Dolores means sorrows — more than one, deliberately — and changing the final e to an i produces something that is not a Spanish word at all, plural or singular. The grammar has been quietly removed.
How old is the name Doloris?
Doloris first appears in US birth records in 1909 — 116 years ago. The typical Doloris alive today was born around 1932, making them about 93 years old. About 500 people named Doloris are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Doloris most popular?
Doloris peaked in 1932, reaching #646 nationally. See the whole 1932 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From dolores to Doloris
The story of Doloris
The word had a brief and slightly absurd scientific career. In the nineteen-forties researchers at an American medical school tried to put pain on a numerical scale, using heat applied to the forehead and asking subjects to report just-noticeable differences, and they named the unit a dol after the Latin. Twenty-one dols was supposed to be the ceiling of human pain. The method did not survive contact with other laboratories, which could not reproduce it, and the unit is now a footnote — but for a while pain was officially measurable, in units named after this name.
Meaning
sorrows
From a Marian title referring to a specific numbered set of griefs rather than to sorrow in general. The plural is doing real work in the original and this spelling loses it.
How the name formed
- dolores
- Dolores
- Doloris
Related forms: Dolores
Pronouncing Doloris
duh-LOR-iss
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. Spanish gives the final syllable a fuller vowel; this spelling reduces it further than the original does.
Nicknames for Doloris
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
- 1909
- Most girls named
- 1932107 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #646reached in 1932
- Change vs 1970
- −28.6%5 in 1971, 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.
Doloris in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dolores in Spanish — same name
Doloriss among us
people named Doloris 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
Doloris 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
- Lola sits inside it as a short form with no trace of the meaning.
- The rhythm is even and the name carries well at length.
- It has a specific and identifiable devotional tradition behind it.
- The meaning is sorrows, which is a good deal to hand to a child.
- Dolores is standard in the language it comes from and this gets corrected.
- The generation that used it is now elderly.
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Doloris
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Doloriss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Doloris are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Doloris in 2025?
- Doloris is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Doloris with classmates?
- Doloris will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
Dorothy#421 · Donna#1962 · Deborah#862 · Debra#4460 · Diane#2607 · Doris#2895 · Denise#1673 · Danielle#549
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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