Don
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Short form of Donald
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dɑn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Don is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 821(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.3K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 1.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #620 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 609 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 821 (inferred from the name graph)
≈790,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Short form of Donald. It is also a variant of the Irish name Donn. Pet forms: Donny, Donnie.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Don 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈790,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Don | 42 |
| US United States | #252 | 109,818 | 1 in 3K | 109K | Don | 609 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Don | 78 |
| CA Canada | #134 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 821 | 2 | Don | 270 |
| GB United Kingdom | #419 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Don | 252 |
| AU Australia | #374 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Don | 219 |
| SG Singapore | #158 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Don | 99 |
| NZ New Zealand | #189 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 10 | Don | 114 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Don is also recorded in 5 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 university professor, particularly one at Oxford or Cambridge.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Different form of Dunn.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, river, Russia; river, Yorkshire; riv
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Italian, forma reduzida ou apocopada de Donno
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, Scotland; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Don Amecheb. 1908USAmerican actor (1908–1993)
- Don Siegelb. 1912USAmerican film director (1912–1991)
- Don Budgeb. 1915USAmerican tennis player (1915-2000)
- Don Keeferb. 1916USAmerican actor (1916–2014)
- Don Youngb. 1933USAmerican politician (1933–2022)
- Captain Beefheartb. 1941USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician and painter (1941-2010)
- Don S. Davisb. 1942USAmerican character actor (1942–2008)
- Don Johnsonb. 1949USAmerican actor and singer (born 1949)
- Don Hallb. 1969USAmerican film director
- Don Diablob. 1980NLDutch DJ and record producer
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)
Attested in 102 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 109K | #513 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.2K | #513 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 89 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 11 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1953 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1992 | 5 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 2 | #1,520 |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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
- Where does the name Don come from?
- Short form of Donald. It is also a variant of the Irish name Donn. Pet forms: Donny, Donnie. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Don a male or female name?
- Don is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Don mean?
- Recorded meaning: Short form of Donald.
- What are other forms of the name Don?
- In the etymology graph, Donnie, Donny and Donal are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Donald.
- In which country does Don have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 791 thousand people named Don in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled don.
- How do you pronounce Don?
- A machine transcription gives /dɑn/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Don?
- In the United States, the national register counted 109,818 people named Don in 2020, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Don compared with other names?
- In Canada, Don is the 134th most common given name of 188,338 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Don?
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/donThe 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, “Don” — the 134th most common given name in Canada. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.