Don

109,818 people in America carry this name — ranked #513 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Baby Boomers.

Say it DAHN

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

D AA1 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 109,818 2020 Census
  • Rank #513 Common
  • Per 100,000 36.4 about 1 in 3,018 people
  • As a surname 2,231 ranked #13,139 the other way round

What Don means and where it comes from

Celtic in origin, reading literally as “brown”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Don through the years

168,336 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1946, with 4,131 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40s 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1940s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Don

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Don David — same opening
  • Don Daniel — same opening
  • Don Donald — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Don was 1946. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

Is Don used for boys or for girls?

98.9% men
1,242 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Same syllables and stress as Don

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 78.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 9.6%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.1%
  • Two or more races — 2.5%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 5.2%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.8%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The states where Don is most common

In Louisiana the name is given 2.7 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Louisiana ×2.7
  • Arkansas ×2.1
  • Mississippi ×2.0
  • Oklahoma ×1.9
  • Hawaii ×1.9

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Celtic origin