Entry № 2635 · Greek origin

Dorothea Dorothea — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ doh-roh-THAY-ah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Greek
Meaning
"Gift of God (Dorothea Lange; Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch)"
Syllables
4
First recorded
Ancient (Greek)

A name that means "gift of god (dorothea lange; dorothea brooke in middlemarch)".

Dorothea is from the Greek dōron (gift) + theos (god) — same elements as Theodora in reverse order. Dorothea Brooke is the heroine of George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) — widely considered the greatest English novel.

Gift of God.

The name in its native script.

Δωροθέα
Transliteration
Dōrothéa
Pronunciation
/ ˌdɒr.əˈθiː.ə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Dorothea stands.

Dorothea does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Dorotheas before her.

Real people
Dorothea Lange
American documentary photographer.
1895 – 1965
Dorothea Dix
American asylum reform activist.
1802 – 1887
In fiction
Dorothea Brooke
George Eliot's Middlemarch.
1871

Names connected to Dorothea.

The number behind Dorothea.

5

The Seeker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Dorothea reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.