Dene
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A valley, especially the deep valley of a stream or rivulet
Used for both men and women· registers list it under both sexes; no split published
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/diːn/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Dene is a given name used for both men and women, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 36Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 65K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 89K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 231 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 36K (inferred from the name graph)
≈770 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A valley, especially the deep valley of a stream or rivulet.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Dene counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 89K | 3 | Dene | 111 |
| US United States | 769 | 1 in 433K | 551 | Dene | 231 |
| AU Australia | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 65K | 3 | Dene | 88 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 176K | — | Dene | 26 |
| BR Brazil | 299 | 1 in 708K | 342 | — | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 192K | — | Dene | 46 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 36K | 10 | Dene | 42 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Dene is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Canadian Indian people
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Variant spelling of Dean.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Water lily.
as a nameThe African book of names
In mqs, first-person singular pronoun, I here
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, vocative masculine singular of dēnus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Dene Daviesb. 1947AUAustralian speedway rider
- Dene Smutsb. 1949ZASouth African politician
- Ricky Gervaisb. 1961GBnot in their usual nameBritish comedian
- Dene O'Kaneb. 1963NZNew Zealand snooker player (1963–2024)
- Dene Millerb. 1981GBEnglish rugby league footballer
- Dene Halataub. 1983NZNew Zealand rugby league footballer
- Dene Grigardigital artist and scholar
- Dene LittlerAUresearcher
- Dene McDonaldAUinformation analyst
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)45 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Dene mean, and where does it come from?
- A valley, especially the deep valley of a stream or rivulet. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Dene?
- In the etymology graph, Dean, Dena and Dane are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Dene?
- In English /diːn/ (Wiktionary).
- Is Dene a male or female name?
- Dene is used for both men and women. National registers that list it by sex count it under both: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Brazil (Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)). We don't publish a percentage split.
- In which country does Dene have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 774 people named Dene in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dene.
- How common is the name Dene?
- In the United States, the national register counted 769 people named Dene in 2020, about 1 in 433 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dene?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/deneThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Dene”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.