Dua
Feminine · Arabic roots · “prayer”
Three letters, two syllables, and no silent anything — Dua is a word before it is a name, and in two different languages at once. In Arabic it is the personal prayer a believer speaks in their own words; in Albanian it is the plain verb for loving and wanting. Both roads lead to the same small spelling, and both are alive in American classrooms now.
How old is the name Dua?
Dua first appears in US birth records in 1993 — 32 years ago. The typical Dua is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 1,500 people named Dua are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dua most popular?
Dua peaked in 2025, reaching #1060 nationally. Today it ranks #1060, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Dua appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From daʿā (Arabic root d-ʿ-w, 'to call, invoke') to Dua
The story of Dua
The Arabic side is the older and better documented: duʿāʾ appears throughout classical Islamic writing as the name for the prayer a person makes in their own words, and it spread as a girl's given name wherever Arabic religious vocabulary traveled — into Turkish, Urdu, Bosnian and Malay naming alike. The Albanian side is a separate matter entirely, a common verb turned personal name, and its best-known bearer is the British-Albanian singer Dua Lipa, whose international career put the spelling in front of English speakers who had never met it. In the US the name had been quietly present in Arabic- and Turkish-speaking families well before that; the recent climb reflects a wider audience finding it.
Meaningscholars disagree
'prayer, supplication' in Arabic; 'I love / I want' in Albanian
These are not rival guesses at one origin — they are two separate words that arrived at the same spelling. Arabic duʿāʾ (دعاء) is the free, personal supplication, distinct from the fixed ritual prayer, and comes from the root d-ʿ-w, 'to call'. Albanian dua is the everyday first-person verb meaning 'I want' and 'I love'. Which one is behind a given child usually depends on the family.
How the name formed
- daʿāArabic root d-ʿ-w, 'to call, invoke'
- duʿāʾ / دعاء
- Dua
Related forms: دعاء (Duʿāʾ) · دعا (Dua) · Dua · Duaa · Du'a · Dua
Pronouncing Dua
DOO-ah
Two syllables, never one. Arabic speakers often stress the second syllable and lengthen it, doo-AA, and both stress patterns are correct in their own settings. The word is short enough that most English speakers get it right on the second hearing.
Nicknames for Dua
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
- 1993
- Most girls named
- 2025231 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1060reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +35.1%231 in 2025, from 171
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.
Dua in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- دعاء (Duʿāʾ) in Arabic — transliteration
- دعا (Dua) in Urdu — transliteration
- Dua in Turkish — same name
- Duaa in English — spelling variant
- Du'a in English — spelling variant
- Dua in Albanian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, Texas, California.
Duas among us
people named Dua are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 6,958 born in 2025 was named Dua
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Dua
- #1060
- Dua on the 2025 chart
- #704
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Dua went to 231 girls in 2025, but Duaa is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 261, which makes it the 704th most-given girls’ name of the year — 356 places above the chart.
- Dua231
- Duaa30
About 1 girl in 6,158 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 6,958 for Dua 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 Charisma test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Dua's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Charisma climbed just as high around 2000, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Charisma's path sketches the road Dua is walking now.
Dua is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Dua is headed
Dua looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 42% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
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.
Dua beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Dua in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Three letters and fully phonetic — nothing silent, nothing ambiguous, and it fits any form field.
- Works unchanged across Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Bosnian and Albanian contexts, which is rare in a name this short.
- Already short enough to need no nickname, so the full name is what a child actually gets called.
- Recognized internationally through the singer Dua Lipa, so the spelling arrives with a reference point for most people.
- In Arabic-speaking and Muslim communities the word carries clear religious weight — it names an act of prayer. That is a strength for many families and a consideration for others, depending on how you want the name read.
- The recent wave is very much attached to one famous bearer, and for the next stretch of time people will make that connection out loud. Whether that fades depends on a career no one can predict.
- Expect stress to wander between DOO-ah and doo-AA, and expect an occasional mishearing as Dora or Duda over the phone. A short correction handles it, but it will be a lifelong short correction.
- A child with this name is unlikely to meet another — pleasant most days, and one more spelling to spell out on the days it isn't.
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What they receive
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Dua
Feminine · Arabic roots · #1060 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Duas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,500 people named Dua are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Dua?
- Dua is the most-used spelling in US records — 231 of the 261 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Duaa.
- How popular is the name Dua in 2025?
- Dua ranks #1060 among US girl names in 2025, with 231 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Dua?
- About 1 in every 6,958 US girls born in 2025 was named Dua — 231 in all.
- Will my child share the name Dua with classmates?
- Dua will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Dua
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Giavanna#1060 · Liyana#1059 · Ellen#1062 · Sapphire#1057 · Dania#1063 · Jazlynn#1057 · Kalia#1063 · Jalani#1065
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Dua? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Dua and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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