Dona
Feminine · “lady”
Dona is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 18,857 girls against 175 boys since 1880.
Dona is a title in Spanish — doña, the courtesy word for a lady — and a short form of Donna in English, which is the same word borrowed from Italian. Both routes arrive at the same place.
How old is the name Dona?
Dona was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Dona alive today was born around 1945, making them about 80 years old. About 9,800 people named Dona are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dona most popular?
Dona peaked in 1933, reaching #301 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 14,641 places below that high. See the whole 1933 chart.
Where it comes from
From domina to Dona
The story of Dona
Donna was an Italian courtesy title long before it was a name, and American families took it up in the twentieth century as an ordinary given name — it reached the top ten in the 1950s. Dona, without the doubled n, appears alongside it in the registers, sometimes as a Spanish-influenced spelling and sometimes as a simple trimming. It peaked in the mid-1950s.
Meaningscholars disagree
lady
The Italian donna and the Spanish doña both mean 'lady', from the Latin domina, 'mistress of the house' — the feminine of dominus. Read instead as a feminine of Donald, the meaning is the Gaelic domhan and val, 'world ruler', which is unrelated. Both were in American use.
How the name formed
- domina
- donna
- Donna
- Dona
Related forms: Donna · Doña · Dona
Pronouncing Dona
DON-uh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Spanish gives the ñ a y-glide that this spelling does not carry.
Nicknames for Dona
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 1956420 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #301reached in 1933
- Change vs 2017
- −28.6%5 in 2025, 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.
Dona in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Donna in Italian — spelling variant
- Doña in Spanish — related form
- Dona in Portuguese — same name
Donas among us
people named Dona are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Dona
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Dona
- #14942
- Dona on the 2025 chart
- #857
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Dona went to 5 girls in 2025, but Donna is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 103, which makes it the 857th most-given girls’ name of the year — 14,085 places above the chart.
- Donna98
- Dona5
About 1 girl in 15,605 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 321,453 for Dona 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 Aline test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Dona's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Aline climbed just as high around 1909, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Aline's path sketches the road Dona is walking now.
Dona 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
Dona beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Dona in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is transparent in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese alike.
- It is a real courtesy title with a documented Latin ancestry.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk in English.
- Donna is far commoner in American records and will often be assumed.
- In Spanish and Portuguese it is a title rather than a name.
- It is closely dated to the middle of the twentieth century.
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What they receive
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Dona
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Donas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 9,800 people named Dona are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Dona?
- Dona is one of 2 recorded spellings. Donna is the more common one — 98 births in 2025 against 5 for Dona.
- How popular is the name Dona in 2025?
- Dona ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Dona?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Dona — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Dona with classmates?
- Dona will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Dona
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 Dona? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Dona and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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