Deacon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE diacon, dēacon, ME deakne, OFr, ME diacne 'deacon'; first attested Richard le Diakne 1212 Cur (Suffolk)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: Grenada, 2025
/ˈdiːkən/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Deacon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 100K(measured from records)
- GDGrenada1 in 113K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 170Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 314 (measured from records)
- 1 in 100K (inferred from the name graph)
3,322 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from OE diacon, dēacon, ME deakne, OFr, ME diacne 'deacon'; first attested Richard le Diakne 1212 Cur (Suffolk)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Deacon, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Deacon counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 3,322 | 1 in 100K | 7.8K | Deacon | 314 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 173K | — | Deacon | 48 |
| AR Argentina | 124 | 1 in 367K | 124 | — | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 578K | 4 | Deacon | 211 |
| CA Canada | ≈57 est. | ≈1 in 724K | 9 | Deacon | 133 |
| FI Finland | 24 | 1 in 232K | 24 | — | 6 |
| NO Norway | 20 | 1 in 273K | 20 | — | 5 |
| GD Grenada | 1 | 1 in 113K | 1 | — | 1 |
3,322 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Deacon is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A designated minister of charity in the early Church (see Acts 6:1-6).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Greek: servant, messenger
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Siervo
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Theodosius the Deaconb. 1000Byzantine poet
- Richard Deaconb. 1921USAmerican actor (1921–1984)
- Richard Deaconb. 1949GBBritish artist (born 1949)
- Brian Deaconb. 1949GBBritish actor
- Terrence Deaconb. 1950USAmerican anthropologist
- Eric Deaconb. 1950GBBritish actor
- John Deaconb. 1951GBBritish musician, bassist and songwriter (born 1951)
- Louis Deaconb. 1980GBEnglish rugby union footballer
- Dan Deaconb. 1981USAmerican musician
- Adam Deaconb. 1983GBBritish actor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)43 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.3K | #9,388 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.3K | #9,756 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.2K | #9,263 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 124 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 24 | #40,482 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 20 | #43,120 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #222 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Deacon mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE diacon, dēacon, ME deakne, OFr, ME diacne 'deacon'; first attested Richard le Diakne 1212 Cur (Suffolk) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Deacon?
- In English /ˈdiːkən/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Deacon have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.3 thousand people named Deacon, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled deacon.
- Where is Deacon most common?
- Deacon is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 100 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Deacon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,322 people named Deacon in 2010, about 1 in 100 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Deacon?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/deaconThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Deacon”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.