Alden

At the 2020 census, 5,304 Americans bore the surname Alden — 6,191st out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 56,400.

By the numbers

People: 5,304
Rank: 6,191st
How common: 1 in 56,400
Per 100,000: 1.8

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From Old English Ealdwine; equivalent to Alwin. In some cases a variant of Haldane.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Alden described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 88.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.3%
Black, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Alden

Mary Alden (1883–1946)actress
Norman Alden (1924–2012)American actor
Sonja Aldén (born 1977)Swedish singer
Phil Alden Robinson (born 1950)American film director
Cyril Alden (1887–1965)English racing cyclist
Harold Alden (1890–1964)American astronomer
John Alden Carpenter (1876–1951)American composer

People named Alden with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Alden

Also a first name

Alden has been given to 19,173 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2024. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.