Dale

Dale is the 1,219th most common surname in the United States, shared by 28,382 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 10,500.

By the numbers

People: 28,382
Rank: 1,219th
How common: 1 in 10,500
Per 100,000: 9.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 74.8%
Black, not Hispanic 14.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 2.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%

Notable people called Dale

Henry Hallett Dale (1875–1968)English pharmacologist, Nobel laureate
Dick Dale (1937–2019)American surf rock guitarist
James Badge Dale (born 1978)American actor
Alan Dale (born 1947)New Zealand actor
Johannes Dale (born 1997)Norwegian biathlete
Dominic Dale (born 1971)Welsh snooker player
Kari Brattset Dale (born 1991)Norwegian handball player
Jim Dale (born 1935)British actor, singer and songwriter

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

Surnames like Dale

Also a first name

Dale has been given to 300,043 American babies as a first name since 1881, peaking in 1958. 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.