Dawkins

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Dawkins is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 66th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Willelmus filius Daukyn 1332 SRLa, William Daukyn 13th WhC (Lancashire), Richard Daukyns 1354 AssSt, Magister Doctor Dawkyns 1534 GildY; 'Little David', from Dawe + kin.

rarermore common
  • JMJamaica1 in 3.6K
  • AUAustralia1 in 18K
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 21K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈16K

across 9 countries

Sources
367

154K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 22K

United States

Meaning & origin

Willelmus filius Daukyn 1332 SRLa, William Daukyn 13th WhC (Lancashire), Richard Daukyns 1354 AssSt, Magister Doctor Dawkyns 1534 GildY; 'Little David', from Dawe + kin

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Dawkins is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States15,431131K rec.1 in 22K15KDawkins367
GB United Kingdom11,1859.1K rec.Dawkins164
AU Australia4,5994.3K rec.Dawkins110
CA Canada2,0572K rec.Dawkins86
JM Jamaica#1031,3321.4K rec.Dawkins36
PK Pakistan307321 rec.Dawkins1
EG Egypt278269 rec.Dawkins6
RU Russia248266 rec.Dawkins8
IT Italy239240 rec.Dawkins12
LR Liberia#66217717 rec.Dawkins2
TR Türkiye209212 rec.Dawkins4
GR Greece8483 rec.Dawkins7

Roughly 15K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 22K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages

  • English159K86%
  • Spanish6K3%
  • 5.7K3%
  • Hungarian1.3K1%
  • German1.2K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English159,43286%
Spanish6,0053%
5,6743%
Hungarian1,2971%
German1,2231%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Dawkins is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname7.7K records spelled Dawkins5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, United Kingdom, Panama

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Dâwkîns

50 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

Dawkins is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, A surname transferred from the given name.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name

1940196019802000Richard Dawkins, b. 1941Marian Stamp Dawkins, b. 1945Darryl Dawkins, b. 1957Paul Dawkins, b. 1957Johnny Dawkins, b. 1963Brian Dawkins, b. 1973Aloe Blacc, b. 1979Simon Dawkins, b. 1987Eddie Dawkins, b. 1989Angelo Dawkins, b. 1990

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence

Attested in 24 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Dawkins
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201015K#2,363
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202015K#2,305
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200014K#2,382
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names41#2,425
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)33#60,081
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)33#58,864
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)31#38,683
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)15#30,172
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)15#28,933
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)14#48,528
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20265
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20245#101,952

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 21 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dawkins?
We estimate roughly 16 thousand people bear Dawkins (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Dawkins have the most bearers?
We estimate about 15 thousand people bear Dawkins in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled dawkins.
How common is Dawkins compared with other names?
In Liberia, Dawkins is the 66th most common surname of 6,092 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Dawkins mean?
Recorded meaning: Willelmus filius Daukyn 1332 SRLa, William Daukyn 13th WhC (Lancashire), Richard Daukyns 1354 AssSt, Magister Doctor Dawkyns 1534 GildY; 'Little David', from Dawe + kin
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dawkins

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Dawkins” — the 66th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dawkins parses inside a full name →