Dalton

At the 2020 census, 48,924 Americans bore the surname Dalton — 680th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 6,109.

By the numbers

People: 48,924
Rank: 680th
How common: 1 in 6,109
Per 100,000: 16.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Old English dæl (“valley”) + tun (“settlement”). Equivalent.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 84.0%
Black, not Hispanic 7.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.8%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Dalton

John Dalton (1766–1844)British chemist and mathematician
Timothy Dalton (born 1946)British actor of stage, film and television
Brett Dalton (born 1983)American actor
Tony Dalton (born 1975)American and Mexican actor
Abby Dalton (1932–2020)American actress
Roque Dalton Garcia (1935–1975)Salvadoran journalist and poet
Kristen Dalton (born 1986)American model
Audrey Dalton (born 1934)Irish-American actress

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

Surnames like Dalton

Also a first name

Dalton has been given to 86,142 American babies as a first name since 1881, peaking in 1998. 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.