Dina
A feminine name of Greek origin meaning "divine" or "heavenly".
Name Census estimates that about 26,995 living Americans carry the first name Dina. The name is used almost exclusively for girls. The average person named Dina today is around 47 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Dina births was 1969 (1,580 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Dina. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Dina with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Dina is used almost entirely for girls, the SSA data does show 76 boys registered with the name since 1880.
People living today
27K
~ 1 in 12,697 Americans
Peak year
1969
1,580 babies that year
Average age
47
years old
1990 SSA rank
#1,334
Tracked since 1883
Census
Dina in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 39,719 people with the first name Dina, which placed it at #1,054 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#1,054
National first-name rank
People counted
40K
39,719 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
13.2
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
62.6% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Dina
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Dina is White at 62.6%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (24.3%) and Black (5.8%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Dina described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Dina at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White62.6% · 24,861
- Hispanic or Latino24.3% · 9,656
- Black or African American5.8% · 2,308
- Asian and Pacific Islander4.8% · 1,922
- Two or more races2.0% · 810
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.4% · 162
Gender
Gender distribution for Dina
Out of the 31,929 babies given the name Dina since 1880, 99.8% were registered as female. The name sits firmly on the female side of the spectrum, with only a handful of male registrations across the entire dataset.
Dina as a male name
- Ranked #8,468 in 1990
- 5 male births in 1990
- Peak: 1970 (10 births)
Dina as a female name
- Ranked #1,334 in 2024
- 171 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1969 (1,571 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Dina appears almost entirely female. Of the 39,715 people counted with this name, 99.6% were female and only a very small share were male.
Popularity
Dina: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Dina from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1960s, with 10,245 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1960s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Dina by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Dina during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Dinas live
The SSA's state-level files cover 45 states and territories. New York, California, New Jersey recorded the most babies named Dina, while Montana, Idaho, Nevada recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 609 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Dina
The name Dina has its origins in several languages and cultures, dating back to ancient times. In Hebrew, Dina means "judged" or "vindicated," and it is derived from the biblical figure Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. The Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible recounts the story of Dinah, whose abduction and subsequent rape by Shechem, the son of a Canaanite prince, led to a violent retribution by her brothers.
In Greek, the name Dina is a shortened form of the feminine name Theodina, which means "gift of God." It is believed to have been derived from the Greek words "theos" meaning "god" and "doron" meaning "gift." The earliest recorded use of the name Dina in Greece dates back to the Byzantine era, around the 5th century AD.
The name Dina also has roots in the Slavic languages, particularly Russian and Ukrainian, where it is a diminutive form of the name Evdokiya or Avdotya. In Russian, Dina can mean "force" or "power," while in Ukrainian, it can mean "gift" or "present."
One of the earliest recorded historical figures with the name Dina was Dina, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (1223-1282). She was married to the Sultan of the Seljuk Empire, Ghiyath al-Din Masud II, in the 13th century.
Another notable historical figure named Dina was Dina Pronicheva (1911-1997), a Soviet sniper during World War II. She is credited with killing over 100 enemy soldiers and was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War for her bravery.
In literature, the name Dina appears in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). Dina is the name of the daughter of Dmitri Karamazov, one of the central characters in the novel.
The name Dina also has significance in the arts. Dina Vierny (1919-2009) was a French sculptor and model, best known for her sculptures of female forms. She was the muse and model for several renowned artists, including Aristide Maillol and Henri Matisse.
In the field of music, Dina Shore (1915-1994) was an American singer and actress, known for her popular recordings during the 1940s and 1950s. She was also the first recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Dina
People
Dina + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Dina as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with D
Other first names starting with D with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Dina: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Dina?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 26,995 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Dina going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 12,697 US residents.
Is Dina a common name?
We classify Dina as "Uncommon". It ranks above 98.7% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 31,929 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Dina most popular?
The single biggest year for Dina was 1969, when 1,580 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Dina is about 47 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Dina in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 39,719 people with the name Dina, or 13.15 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #1,054 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Dina in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Dina?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Dina appears almost entirely female. Of the 39,715 people counted with this name, 99.6% were female and only a very small share were male. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Dina?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Dina is White at 62.6%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (24.3%) and Black (5.8%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Dina most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Dina in the 2020 Census, accounting for 62.6% (24,861 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Dina in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Dina a female name?
Yes, 99.8% of people registered as Dina in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Dina still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Dina in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Dina can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many people have the name Dina?
HowManyOfMe.org, our sister site, answers that with the living-bearer count in one glance.