Drayton
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Drayton is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Grenada it is the 16th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Person from Drayton, from a place-name meaning ‘estate where drays are used’.
- AUAustralia1 in 36K◐
- USUnited States1 in 43K
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 57K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈7.8K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 308 ●
- 1 in 2.9K ◐
across 11 countries
recorded for this name
84K records
Official registry-verified
St. Vincent & Grenadines
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled דרייטון in IL Israel.
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●
Person from Drayton, from a place-name meaning ‘estate where drays are used’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 7,648 | 71K rec. | 1 in 43K | 7.6K | Drayton | 308 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 4,115 | 4.1K rec. | — | listed | Drayton | 114 |
| AU Australia | — | 2,361 | 2.3K rec. | — | — | Drayton | 107 |
| CA Canada | — | 723 | 825 rec. | — | 1 | Drayton | 53 |
| RU Russia | — | 685 | 755 rec. | — | — | Drayton | 5 |
| GH Ghana | #419 | 631 | 663 rec. | — | — | Drayton | 8 |
| DE Germany | — | 321 | 339 rec. | — | — | Drayton | 21 |
| JM Jamaica | #543 | 303 | 314 rec. | — | — | Drayton | 3 |
| IT Italy | — | 169 | 212 rec. | — | — | Drayton | 3 |
| GY Guyana | #975 | 53 | 90 rec. | 1 in 14K | 53 | Drayton | 4 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 35 | 0 rec. | 1 in 2.9K | 35 | — | 1 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | — | 24 | 24 rec. | — | — | Drayton | 1 |
Roughly 7.6K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 43K). 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●
- English75K88%
- Spanish2.4K3%
- 1.3K2%
- French9101%
- German6471%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 74,511 | 88% |
| Spanish | 2,442 | 3% |
| 1,274 | 2% | |
| French | 910 | 1% |
| German | 647 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Drayton is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from one of several places called Drayton, or Dreyton; first attested Ledmar de Draiton 1086 InqEl
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, numerous places in England so called from OE drceg (see Draycott) + tun enclosure, settlement. Dreassi see Andrew
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Any of several places in England, with more in other countries named after the English ones:
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1915 | 5 |
| 1916 | 12 |
| 1917 | 8 |
| 1918 | 6 |
| 1919 | 9 |
| 1920 | 11 |
| 1922 | 8 |
| 1923 | 6 |
| 1925 | 5 |
| 1928 | 12 |
| 1929 | 7 |
| 1930 | 6 |
| 1931 | 6 |
| 1932 | 6 |
| 1933 | 10 |
| 1936 | 6 |
| 1938 | 6 |
| 1939 | 7 |
| 1940 | 5 |
| 1941 | 7 |
| 1942 | 8 |
| 1944 | 6 |
| 1945 | 5 |
| 1946 | 6 |
| 1947 | 9 |
| 1948 | 7 |
| 1951 | 7 |
| 1952 | 10 |
| 1953 | 6 |
| 1954 | 5 |
| 1955 | 6 |
| 1956 | 6 |
| 1957 | 8 |
| 1958 | 8 |
| 1961 | 6 |
| 1962 | 6 |
| 1963 | 7 |
| 1964 | 9 |
| 1965 | 9 |
| 1966 | 5 |
| 1967 | 5 |
| 1968 | 6 |
| 1969 | 8 |
| 1970 | 11 |
| 1971 | 11 |
| 1972 | 8 |
| 1973 | 8 |
| 1975 | 10 |
| 1976 | 5 |
| 1977 | 9 |
| 1978 | 8 |
| 1979 | 8 |
| 1980 | 10 |
| 1981 | 5 |
| 1982 | 7 |
| 1983 | 5 |
| 1984 | 10 |
| 1985 | 9 |
| 1986 | 13 |
| 1987 | 13 |
| 1988 | 12 |
| 1989 | 11 |
| 1990 | 24 |
| 1991 | 16 |
| 1992 | 21 |
| 1993 | 31 |
| 1994 | 32 |
| 1995 | 34 |
| 1996 | 41 |
| 1997 | 44 |
| 1998 | 51 |
| 1999 | 38 |
| 2000 | 53 |
| 2001 | 49 |
| 2002 | 39 |
| 2003 | 61 |
| 2004 | 50 |
| 2005 | 54 |
| 2006 | 55 |
| 2007 | 60 |
| 2008 | 73 |
| 2009 | 66 |
| 2010 | 56 |
| 2011 | 53 |
| 2012 | 78 |
| 2013 | 54 |
| 2014 | 33 |
| 2015 | 41 |
| 2016 | 48 |
| 2017 | 44 |
| 2018 | 33 |
| 2019 | 32 |
| 2020 | 34 |
| 2021 | 28 |
| 2022 | 41 |
| 2023 | 31 |
| 2024 | 36 |
| 2025 | 50 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 98 years between 1915–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Michael Draytonb. 1563GBEnglish poet
- John Draytonb. 1766USUnited States federal judge and amateur botanist (1766-1822)
- William Draytonb. 1776USAmerican politician
- Grace Draytonb. 1877UScomics artist and illustrator
- Noel Draytonb. 1913USactor (1913-1981)
- Paul Draytonb. 1939USAmerican sprinter
- Bill Draytonb. 1943USAmerican social entrepreneur
- Buster Draytonb. 1954USAmerican boxer
- William Draytonb. 1959USAmerican rapper and television personality (born 1959)
- Charley Draytonb. 1965USAmerican musician
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 35 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.6K | #4,640 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.4K | #4,680 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.9K | #4,669 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.5K | #9,176 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 158 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 158 | #30,010 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 153 | #14,071 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1990 | 131 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 106 | #35,322 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1980 | 85 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 53 | #572 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 50 | — |
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 · 175 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Drayton?
- We estimate roughly 7.8 thousand people bear Drayton (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Drayton have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 7.6 thousand people bear Drayton in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled drayton.
- Where is Drayton most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Drayton is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 2.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Drayton compared with other names?
- In Grenada, Drayton is the 16th most common surname of 2,330 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Drayton mean?
- Recorded meaning: Person from Drayton, from a place-name meaning ‘estate where drays are used’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/draytonThe 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
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, “Drayton” — the 16th most common surname in Grenada. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.