Douglass
Masculine · “dark stream”
Douglass is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 5,769 boys against 26 girls since 1880.
Douglas is a dark stream. Gaelic dubh glas names water that runs black — peat-stained, which a great deal of Scottish water is — and there are rivers called that all over Scotland and Ireland. The doubled s in this spelling has a specific American history: a man escaping slavery chose it from a poem.
How old is the name Douglass?
Douglass first appears in US birth records in 1883 — 142 years ago. The typical Douglass alive today was born around 1957, making them about 68 years old. About 3,700 people named Douglass are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Douglass most popular?
Douglass peaked in 1942, reaching #575 nationally. See the whole 1942 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From dubh glas to Douglass
The story of Douglass
Frederick Douglass was born Bailey, took the name Johnson while escaping, and changed it again in New Bedford at the suggestion of a friend who had been reading Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake, which has a Douglas in it. He kept the doubled s to distinguish himself, and he became the most photographed American of the nineteenth century and one of its great orators and writers. The spelling with two s's is now essentially always a reference to him, which is a considerable thing for one letter to carry.
Meaning
dark stream
Scottish Gaelic dubh means black or dark and glas means a stream or a green-grey color, and the compound names watercourses across the Gaelic-speaking world. A powerful Scottish family took the name from one of them and became one of the great houses of the kingdom. The derivation is not disputed. The doubled s is not Gaelic and belongs entirely to the name's later history.
How the name formed
- dubh glas
- Douglas
- Douglass
Related forms: Dùghlas
Pronouncing Douglass
DUG-luss
DUG-luss, two syllables, stress at the front, the second vowel reduced. Douglas and Douglass are said identically; the doubled s is a spelling convention rather than a lengthened sound.
Nicknames for Douglass
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
- 1883
- Most boys named
- 1969132 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #575reached in 1942
- Change vs 2018
- +40.0%7 in 2024, from 5
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.
Douglass in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dùghlas in Scottish Gaelic — same name
Douglasss among us
people named Douglass 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
Douglass 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
- The Gaelic meaning is concrete and describes something real and visible.
- Doug is a complete working short form that needs no explanation.
- The doubled spelling carries a specific and genuinely admirable American reference.
- Douglas is the standard spelling and this will be corrected toward it constantly.
- The doubled s is a deliberate reference for most people who know it, so the name carries a claim as well as a sound.
- It goes to girls as well in this spelling, so on a form it settles less than it appears to.
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Douglass
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Douglasss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,700 people named Douglass are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Douglass in 2025?
- Douglass is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Douglass with classmates?
- Douglass will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
David#35 · Daniel#22 · Donald#690 · Dennis#707 · Douglas#807 · Dylan#41 · Danny#628 · Dale#1409
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Douglass? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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