Dawson
The boy's name Dawson has been in the national records since 1885, with 54,199 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 143rd. About 53,000 Dawsons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 13.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Dawson boys named Dawson
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 54,199
- Estimated living today
- 53,000
- Median age today
- 13
- Peak year
- 1999
- Best rank
- 136th
- Rank in 2025
- 143rd
- First recorded
- 1885
- Girls / boys
- 1,397 / 52,802
How old the living Dawsons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 54,199 babies given the name since 1885, about 53,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 31,000 of them are children and 330 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Dawsons
- Dawson Mercer (born 2001)Canadian ice hockey player
- Dawson Turner (1775–1858)English banker, botanist and antiquary
People named Dawson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Dawson is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Dawson is most concentrated in Alaska (4.1×), Idaho (3.2×), South Dakota (3.0×), Utah (2.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1999
The most popular boys’ names the year Dawson peaked:
Dawson elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Dawson | 1,342 | 470th |
| France boys | Dawson | 1,200 | 332nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Dawson | 179 | 126th |
| Ireland boys | Dawson | 169 | 226th |
| Scotland boys | Dawson | 147 | 243rd |
| Belgium boys | Dawson | 79 | 451st |
| England and Wales girls | Dawson | 3 | 5,493rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Dawson: rank by region
In 2005, Dawson was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Dawson | 469 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Dawson among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Dawson | — | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Dawson against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.