Dawn
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Dawn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In North Korea it is the 83rd most common given name. Recorded meaning: English equivalent of Latin aurora « dawn ».
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 634(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 642
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 839
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)
- #301 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 599 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 594 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,600,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, 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)
English equivalent of Latin aurora « dawn ».
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dawn 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 | — | ≈1,600,000 est. | ≈1 in 856 | — | Dawn | 49 |
| US United States | #127 | 252,273 | 1 in 1.3K | 252K | Dawn | 599 |
| GB United Kingdom | #119 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 634 | 4 | Dawn | 331 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #278 | ≈69,000 est. | ≈1 in 817 | — | Dawn | 15 |
| KP North Korea | #83 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 594 | — | Dawn | 4 |
| IE Ireland | #88 | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 642 | — | Dawn | 98 |
| NZ New Zealand | #133 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 839 | 12 | Dawn | 120 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); 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)
Dawn 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, Modern name, unused in Ireland before the twentieth century; occurs occasionally in Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, To begin to brighten with daylight.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, people, long., Sarawak & Borneo
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Dayalt [Dyak]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, ngélé-wo. Kina ngélé tatoni a wola
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Dawn Fraserb. 1937AUAustralian swimmer and politician
- Dawn Wellsb. 1938USAmerican actress (1938–2020)
- Dawn Frenchb. 1957GBBritish actress, comedian and writer (born 1957)
- k.d. langb. 1961CAnot in their usual nameCanadian singer-songwriter
- Kelly Craftb. 1962USnot in their usual nameAmerican businesswoman and diplomat (born 1962)
- Kristin Chenowethb. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, singer, author (born 1968)
- Dawn Staleyb. 1970USAmerican basketball player and coach (born 1970)
- Laura Baileyb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican voice actress
- Dawn Olivierib. 1981USAmerican actress
- Victoria Justiceb. 1993USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer (born 1993)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 61 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 252K | #217 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 674 | #217 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 85 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2000 | 12 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 6 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2011 | 4 | #674 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2006 | 3 | #384 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Dawn mean, and where does it come from?
- English equivalent of Latin aurora « dawn ». Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Dawn a male or female name?
- Dawn is a female 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.
- In which country does Dawn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.6 million people named Dawn in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dawn.
- How common is the name Dawn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 252,273 people named Dawn in 2020, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Dawn compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Dawn is the 83rd most common given name of 2,746 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Dawn?
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/dawnThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Dawn” — the 83rd most common given name in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.