Entry № 2629 · 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 Lange (1895-1965) — *American documentary photographer whose Dust Bowl-era images — most famously Migrant Mother (1936) of Florence Owens Thompson — defined the visual memory of the Great Depression. Worked for the Farm Security Administration alongside Walker Evans and Marion Post Wolcott. Dorothea Brooke is the heroine of George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) — widely considered the greatest English novel. Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)* — American activist whose 1841 testimony to the Massachusetts legislature founded the modern asylum reform movement.

Subject of Linda Gordon's Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (2009).

Gift of God. Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother; Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch; Dorothea Dix's asylum reform.

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.