Dryden

5,207 people in the United States were counted with the surname Dryden in the 2020 census, making it the 6,288th most common in the country. That is about one person in 57,400.

By the numbers

People: 5,207
Rank: 6,288th
How common: 1 in 57,400
Per 100,000: 1.7

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Old English drȳġe (“dry”) + denu (“valley”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 83.7%
Black, not Hispanic 7.8%
Hispanic or Latino 4.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Dryden

John Dryden (1631–1700)17th-century English poet and playwright
Spencer Dryden (1938–2005)American drummer
Ken Dryden (1947–2025)Canadian ice hockey goaltender and politician
Hugh Latimer Dryden (1898–1965)American aeronautical scientist and civil servant
Wheeler Dryden (1892–1957)English-born American actor

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

Surnames like Dryden

Dryer

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.