Dane

2,749 people in the United States were counted with the surname Dane in the 2020 census, making it the 11,043rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 109,000.

By the numbers

People: 2,749
Rank: 11,043rd
How common: 1 in 109,000
Per 100,000: 0.92

Where the name comes from

Origin a nickname

From Middle English Dane, from Old Norse danir or Old English Dene. Both forms ultimately descend from Proto-Germanic *daniz.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 2.8%
Black, not Hispanic 2.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Dane

Eric Dane (1972–2026)American actor
Karl Dane (1886–1934)Danish-American comedian and actor
Clemence Dane (1888–1965)English novelist
Barbara Dane (1927–2024)American singer

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

Surnames like Dane

Also a first name

Dane has been given to 33,979 American babies as a first name since 1898, peaking in 1986. 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.