Desiree
- Pronunciation
- [De-si-ree]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- The One Desired.
- Origin
- French
About the Name Desiree
Desiree comes from the French desiree, the past-participle feminine form of desirer (to desire, to long for) — meaning the one who is desired or the desired one. The name carries an inherently romantic quality in its French etymology: to be named Desiree is to be named as someone who is longed for, wanted, and cherished. The name passed from French into English-language use without the accent mark that would appear in standard French orthography, and its three-syllable flow — open, vowel-rich, and melodic — gave it a sensuous elegance that distinguished it from the crisper Anglo-American feminine names of the same era.
In US Social Security records, Desiree first entered the female top-1000 in 1983, immediately reaching its peak rank of #94 that year before beginning a long, gradual decline across the following three decades. It maintained a presence through 2017 — its final year in the top-1000 at #965 — after accumulating 19,083 top-1000 births across its thirty-five-year run. The neighboring years of 2016 (#953) and 2015 (#806) trace a slow, steady retreat, and the name's thirty-five-year presence in the rankings marks it as a name with genuine staying power even as it never recaptured its debut peak.
Desiree's sustained presence across the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and into the 2010s reflects its appeal across multiple cultural communities — particularly in African-American and Latino naming traditions, where French-inflected names with romantic meanings have maintained strong popularity. The recorded variant is Desirae — a phonetic respelling that preserves the sound while replacing the French -ee ending with the -ae digraph, producing a form that looks simultaneously more English and more unusual on the page.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Desiree
US Popularity History (1983–2017)
Annual US births named Desiree by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1983 with 2,915 girls named Desiree (girl rank #94 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2017, ranked #965 for girls (273 US births). That's 871 places below its 1983 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 Desiree Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Desiree the strongest states are California, Tennessee, Georgia.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #708 | 461 |
| 2 | Tennessee | #730 | 36 |
| 3 | Georgia | #778 | 37 |
| 4 | Arizona | #805 | 48 |
| 5 | New Jersey | #822 | 26 |
| 6 | Maryland | #837 | 18 |
| 7 | Florida | #889 | 108 |
| 8 | Washington | #895 | 21 |
| 9 | Texas | #927 | 256 |
| 10 | Missouri | #983 | 15 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Illinois | #1,035 | 26 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #1,028 | 36 |
| 3 | Ohio | #992 | 36 |
| 4 | Missouri | #983 | 15 |
| 5 | Texas | #927 | 256 |
| 6 | Washington | #895 | 21 |
| 7 | Florida | #889 | 108 |
| 8 | Maryland | #837 | 18 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #822 | 26 |
| 10 | Arizona | #805 | 48 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Desiree in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desirae | Variant Of Desiree Meaning The One Desired. | Female | French |
Looking for names like Desiree?
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 Desiree to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Desiree against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).