Roden
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) From Irish Gaelic Ó Roddin, ‘descendant of Roddn’, a name meaning ‘little lively or high-spirited one’; (ii) a different form of Roddam
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɹoʊdən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Roden is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 32K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 50K
- DEGermany≈1 in 70K
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)
- Sources
- 362 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈47,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Congo - Kinshasa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) From Irish Gaelic Ó Roddin, ‘descendant of Roddn’, a name meaning ‘little lively or high-spirited one’; (ii) a different form of Roddam
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Roden 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 | — | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Roden | 8 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #254 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | — | Roden | 2 |
| US United States | — | 6,653 | 1 in 50K | 6.7K | Roden | 362 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 2.8K | Roden | 144 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 70K | — | Roden | 71 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Roden | 23 |
| GD Grenada | — | 4 | 1 in 28K | 4 | — | 1 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); 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)
Roden 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 Catalan, third-person plural present indicative of rodar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, A historical region on the coast of Uppland.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, definite singular of rod
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Luxembourgish, to recommend, to advise
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, inflection of rodar:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Karel Roden staršíb. 1891CZCzech actor (1891–1961)
- Benjamin Rodenb. 1902USAmerican sect leader
- Karel Roden mladšíb. 1914CZCzech actor (1914–1992)
- Dan Rodenb. 1950USAmerican medical researcher
- Michael Rodenb. 1961ATAustrian endocrinologist
- Karel Rodenb. 1962CZCzech actor
- Steve Rodenb. 1964USAmerican artist (1964–2023)
- Marian Rodenb. 1964CZCzech actor
- Holland Rodenb. 1986USAmerican actress
- Helen Rodenb. 1986FJFijian-born Australian rules footballer
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 34 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.7K | #5,245 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.3K | #5,092 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.9K | #5,632 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.8K | #2,721 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 4 | #219 |
| 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Roden mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) From Irish Gaelic Ó Roddin, ‘descendant of Roddn’, a name meaning ‘little lively or high-spirited one’; (ii) a different form of Roddam Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Roden?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹoʊdən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Roden have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 47 thousand people named Roden in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled roden.
- How common is the name Roden?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,653 people named Roden in 2010, about 1 in 50 thousand residents.
- How common is Roden compared with other names?
- In Congo - Kinshasa, Roden is the 254th most common surname of 44,726 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Roden?
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/rodenThe 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, “Roden” — the 254th most common surname in Congo - Kinshasa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.