Deborah is of Hebrew origin and means "bee." It was popular among Puritans during the 17th century, but it wasn't widely used until the mid-20th century when it entered the top 1000 names for girls in the United States. The name Deborah has been associated with prominent figures such as Deborah Sampson, a female soldier who disguised herself as a man to fight in the American Revolution, and Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian known for her work on Holocaust denial.
The name Deborah was quite popular from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, with a peak of 94 births in 1952. However, its popularity declined steadily after that, dropping to single digits by the late 1970s and remaining low throughout the 1980s and 1990s.