Deborah
From the Hebrew Devora, a word for bee. Just 284 women in Poland carry it, and no girls got it last year, so most Poles have never met one.
Deborah Pronunciation
Deborah is pronounced de-BO-rahkh (/dɛˈbɔrax/).
What Deborah means
Where Deborah comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Deborah comes from the Hebrew Devorah, a word that means bee. In the Book of Judges she is a prophet and a judge, the only woman to hold that office in ancient Israel, and the Song of Deborah in chapter five ranks among the oldest surviving passages of Hebrew verse.
The bee is worth pausing on. In the old world a hive stood for order and for speech that reached people, and a name meaning bee sat well on a woman remembered for what she said.
Puritan families in England took the name up in the seventeenth century, and English speakers have kept it since. The variant Debora drops one letter and travels across borders more easily. On a Polish class register it needs no explanation.
Deborah still means bee.
How many people are named Deborah
1 in 79380 women in Poland is named Deborah. 284 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1801 among female names.
Deborah as a middle name
Deborah is a first name for 284 women in Poland and a middle name for another 79, a 78/22 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 743rd, between Belén (79) and Maura (79).
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#741 Audrey79
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#742 Belén79
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#743 Deborah79
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#744 Maura79
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#745 Mirona79