Dennis
- Pronunciation
- [De-nnis]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Named For Saint Denys
- Origin
- French
About the Name Dennis
Dennis descends from the Old French Denys, ultimately from the Greek Dionysios meaning "of Dionysus" — referring to the Greek god of wine, festivity, and theater. The name's overwhelming Catholic anchor is Saint Denis of Paris (3rd century CE, the iconic French saint and patron saint of Paris and France), who was martyred in Paris and gave his name to the Saint-Denis Basilica.
Notable bearers include American basketball star Dennis Rodman (Dennis Keith Rodman, born 1961, the iconic American NBA Hall of Fame defensive specialist who won five NBA championships in the 1990s); American actor Dennis Quaid (born 1954, the iconic American actor of The Right Stuff 1983 and The Parent Trap 1998); American actor Dennis Hopper (1936–2010, the iconic American actor of Easy Rider 1969); and the iconic American comic-strip character Dennis the Menace (introduced 1951).
Dennis held a US top-25 boys' rank from 1942 through 1980 — about four decades of consistent American popularity, peaking around 1949 at #18 in the United States. The name has receded since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 boys' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Greek-Latin-French-Catholic pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built Saint Denis religious anchor, the strong Dennis Rodman American sports cultural anchor, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Catholic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Den (the dominant short form, casual and warm), Denny (also a popular standalone name on its own), and the rare Nis each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Dennis, Denis (the historical French spelling), and Denys have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Denis (French/Russian), Dionysos (Greek original), Dionisio (Italian/Spanish), Denys (Ukrainian/French), and the original Greek Dionysios.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Dennis
US Popularity History (1934–2025)
Annual US births named Dennis by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1952 with 24,552 boys named Dennis (boy rank #18 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #707 for boys (381 US births). That's 689 places below its 1952 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Dennis Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Dennis the strongest states are Nebraska, Connecticut, Massachusetts.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nebraska | #401 | 18 |
| 2 | Connecticut | #413 | 45 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #426 | 107 |
| 4 | Mississippi | #449 | 36 |
| 5 | New Jersey | #449 | 153 |
| 6 | Maryland | #457 | 112 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #468 | 45 |
| 8 | Nevada | #478 | 17 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #478 | 193 |
| 10 | Iowa | #527 | 35 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #773 | 298 |
| 2 | Arizona | #712 | 45 |
| 3 | Colorado | #707 | 39 |
| 4 | California | #662 | 405 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #631 | 85 |
| 6 | Georgia | #621 | 127 |
| 7 | Utah | #620 | 31 |
| 8 | North Carolina | #618 | 129 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #617 | 50 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | #616 | 19 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Dennis in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Dennis?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Dennis to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Dennis against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).