Dawn

given name · English · Latin script

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

Dawn is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In Singapore it is the 53rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: English equivalent of Latin aurora « dawn ».

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 678◐
  • IEIreland1 in 916
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 952

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

≈253K ●

across 7 countries

#541 ●

of 16M given names

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
539 ●

4.4M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.1K ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

DawnLatin · English●4.6M records
다운Hangul · Korean●15K records

Locally spelled 다운 in KR South Korea.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

English equivalent of Latin aurora « dawn ».

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dawn is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#113305,117270K rec.—4Dawn258
US United States#113251,5993.7M rec.1 in 1.3K252KDawn539
CA Canada#15983,95783K rec.—3Dawn206
AU Australia#27676,82773K rec.—72Dawn191
IT Italy#33123,95624K rec.——Dawn46
PH Philippines#97920,76518K rec.——Dawn110
KR South Korea#78416,55310K rec.——다운62
DE Germany#83113,92713K rec.—1Dawn99
IE Ireland#13110,18110K rec.——Dawn90
SG Singapore#5310,06110K rec.——Dawn103
RU Russia—9,98510K rec.——Dawn33
NZ New Zealand#738,9988.6K rec.—12Dawn94

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

Languages●

  • English4.6M82%
  • 374K7%
  • Spanish176K3%
  • German35K1%
  • French34K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English4,625,44482%
373,5577%
Spanish175,9503%
German35,2371%
French33,5161%

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◐

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

  • Polish given name24K records spelled Dawn11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Доун

68 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●

Dawn is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, Modern name, unused in Ireland before the twentieth century; occurs occasionally in Ireland.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In English, To begin to brighten with daylight.

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

  • In English, people, long., Sarawak & Borneo

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, Dayalt [Dyak]

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, ngélé-wo. Kina ngélé tatoni a wola

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

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.

Over time●

05K10K15K20K19001950200016K · 1970

Show as table
Dawn in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1888–2025
Yearrecords
18885
18907
18927
18945
18967
19045
19055
19066
19076
19088
19108
19118
191217
191313
191430
191558
191657
191754
191849
191963
192084
192194
1922104
1923131
1924141
1925130
1926175
1927194
1928188
1929223
1930221
1931291
1932319
1933307
1934288
1935398
1936512
1937457
1938471
1939468
1940427
1941530
1942675
1943765
1944654
1945745
19461,040
19471,269
19481,241
19491,285
19501,411
19511,533
19521,884
19532,640
19543,356
19554,216
19565,128
19575,159
19585,674
19597,898
19607,813
19619,148
19628,984
19638,412
196412,613
196513,344
196613,603
196713,167
196813,441
196913,768
197015,681
197114,288
197211,340
19739,890
19749,417
19758,744
19767,048
19776,096
19785,217
19794,725
19804,479
19813,839
19823,088
19832,641
19842,105
19851,730
19861,452
19871,154
19881,061
1989857
1990740
1991669
1992613
1993497
1994391
1995319
1996260
1997318
1998264
1999231
2000240
2001179
2002197
2003200
2004157
2005125
2006130
2007122
2008114
2009113
201092
201194
201290
201378
201494
201599
201685
2017105
2018100
201986
202083
202196
2022100
202378
2024108
202585

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 126 years between 1888–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Dawn Fraser, b. 1937Dawn Wells, b. 1938Dawn French, b. 1957k.d. lang, b. 1961Kelly Craft, b. 1962Kristin Chenoweth, b. 1968Dawn Staley, b. 1970Laura Bailey, b. 1981Dawn Olivieri, b. 1981Victoria Justice, b. 1993
  • Dawn Fraserb. 1937AUAustralian swimmer and politician
  • Dawn Wellsb. 1938USAmerican actress (1938–2020)
  • Dawn Frenchb. 1957GBBritish actress, comedian and writer (born 1957)
  • k.d. langb. 1961CAnot in their usual nameCanadian singer-songwriter
  • Kelly Craftb. 1962USnot in their usual nameAmerican businesswoman and diplomat (born 1962)
  • Kristin Chenowethb. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, singer, author (born 1968)
  • Dawn Staleyb. 1970USAmerican basketball player and coach (born 1970)
  • Laura Baileyb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican voice actress
  • Dawn Olivierib. 1981USAmerican actress
  • Victoria Justiceb. 1993USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer (born 1993)

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 60 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Dawn
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020252K#217
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.4K#19,013
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.3K#19,079
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.3K#20,309
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020674#217
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025663#126
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—357#2,506
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—212#5,018
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—152#4,177
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—150#5,059
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—147#11,547
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—122#7,166

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 · 552 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dawn?
We estimate roughly 253 thousand people bear Dawn (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Dawn have the most bearers?
Dawn is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled dawn.
How common is Dawn compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Dawn is the 113th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Dawn a male or female name?
Dawn is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Dawn mean?
Recorded meaning: English equivalent of Latin aurora « dawn ».
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dawn

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, “Dawn” — the 113th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dawn parses inside a full name →