Dolly

Where Dolly comes from

The dictionaries list Dolly as a given name — a diminutive of the female given names Dorothy, Dolores, and Doris — but don't trace where it came from. The record below is what the SSA data shows.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1692
    Dolly Pentreath born
    last known native speaker of the Cornish language prior to its revival in 1904
  2. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #352 among girls — 21 babies in the first year on record.
  3. 1881
    Peak, #277
    33 babies named Dolly — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1910
    Dolly Haas born
    German-born actress and singer
  5. 2001
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #6,956.
In the dictionary
  • A diminutive of the female given names Dorothy, Dolores, and Doris.
Namesakes
  • Dolly Pentreath · last known native speaker of the Cornish language prior to its revival in 1904, 1692–1777
  • Dolly Haas · German-born actress and singer, 1910–1994
  • Dolly Ahluwalia · Indian actress
  • Dolly Guleria · Indian singer, born 1949
  • Dolly Wells · British actress, born 1972

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.