Douglas
- Pronunciation
- [Doug-las]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Dwells By The Dark Stream
- Origin
- Celtic
About the Name Douglas
Douglas derives from the Scottish and Celtic place-name element dubh glas, meaning "dark stream" or "black water" — a reference to rivers whose peaty banks gave the water a deep, shadowed colour. The name first belonged to the powerful Scottish clan Douglas, whose history stretches back to the 13th century, before spreading as a personal name throughout Britain and the English-speaking world. Its association with rugged Scottish landscape gives Douglas a grounded, natural quality that has sustained it across generations.
The name's most internationally prominent bearer in the 20th century was Douglas MacArthur (born 1880), a five-star American Army general born at Little Rock Barracks, Arkansas, into a military family, who became one of the defining figures of 20th-century American military history.
Douglas first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1929 and climbed swiftly, peaking in 1942 at rank #23 — a wartime high likely reinforced by the high profile of military figures bearing the name. It accumulated over 513,000 top-1000 births across its tracked run, one of the larger totals in the mid-century masculine canon. Notably, Douglas has never fully left the top-1000: it appeared at #853 as recently as 2024, giving it a continuous tracked presence of nearly a century. The result is a name that reads as solidly traditional without feeling archaic. Recorded variants include Doug and Douglass.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Douglas
US Popularity History (1929–2025)
Annual US births named Douglas by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1957 with 16,731 boys named Douglas (boy rank #30 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #807 for boys (308 US births). That's 777 places below its 1957 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 Douglas 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 Douglas the strongest states are Nevada, Mississippi, Utah.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nevada | #450 | 19 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #473 | 34 |
| 3 | Utah | #511 | 33 |
| 4 | Oregon | #535 | 33 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #542 | 81 |
| 6 | Virginia | #543 | 124 |
| 7 | Maryland | #545 | 74 |
| 8 | South Carolina | #561 | 53 |
| 9 | Kentucky | #573 | 34 |
| 10 | New Jersey | #584 | 113 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Douglas in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doug | From The Dark River. The Scottish Douglas Clan Had Two Historical Branches: (Black Douglases And Red Douglases.) The Lords Of These Clans Figure In Sir Walter Scott's Novels. | Male | Scottish |
| Douglass | From The Dark River. The Scottish Douglas Clan Had Two Historical Branches: (Black Douglases And Red Douglases.) The Lords Of These Clans Figure In Sir Walter Scott's Novels. | Male | Scottish |
Famous People Named Douglas
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Douglas.
- Douglas MacArthur — War Hero (1880)
Looking for names like Douglas?
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 Douglas to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Douglas against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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