Dorothy

The name traces to the Greek Dorothea, reversing the elements of Theodora to mean gift of god. English records began substituting the anglicized Dorothy for the Latinate form during the sixteenth century. American parents adopted it heavily in the late nineteenth century, pushing it into the national top ten by the turn of the century.

The name reads as someone who keeps hard butterscotch candies in a cut-glass dish and owns an electric percolator. A Dorothy is rarely pictured under fifty, even though nursery tallies have begun inching upward again. With the average living bearer now seventy-three, the name belongs largely to the generation that remembers rotary dials and cursive penmanship as mandatory civic duties. It suggests someone who keeps a tin of buttons sorted by color and will not be intimidated by a supermarket coupon policy.