The full Dorothy story is being researched
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Roughly 257,000 Dorothys are alive in the US today, we estimate. About 1 in 1,300 Americans.
Made from recorded births by year and sex, multiplied by survival to today's age (SSA life table). It can't see immigration, and it's an estimate, not a census: how the living estimate is made.
The most famous Dorothy in print arrived in 1900, on the first page of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)public domain
Baum picked a name America already used widely. The records then show Dorothy climbing for two more decades to its 1924 peak: 40,097 in a single year.
Meaning, origin, history and namesakes, each claim sourced before it publishes. Leave your email and we’ll send Dorothy’s page when it’s ready.
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