Selden
loc · Latin script
Meaning: person from Selden Farm, Sussex ('willow-valley')
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Selden is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- GBUnited Kingdom
- RURussia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 270 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Selden Farm, Sussex ('willow-valley')
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Selden counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1.9K | Selden | 270 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 149 | Selden | 69 |
| RU Russia | — | — | Selden | 5 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 4 | — | 7 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 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 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Selden is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Seldon in Hatherleigh, Devon, or Selden Farm in Patching, Sussex; first attested Roger de Seldon 1199 Pl (Wa)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, parish of Patching, Sussex, probably so called from OE s(e)alh willow (see Sale 2) + denu valley (see Dean i). Vars.: Seldon, Seldom. Seldes see Zeldes
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In enm, not often, uncommonly, almost never.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ang, rare, infrequent
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)
- John Seldenb. 1584GBEnglish jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law (1584-1654)
- Dudley Seldenb. 1794USAmerican politician (1794-1855)
- Henry R. Seldenb. 1805USAmerican judge (1805-1885)
- John Selden Roaneb. 1817US4th governor of Arkansas from 1849 to 1852
- Robert S. Garnettb. 1819USnot in their usual nameConfederate Army general (1819–1861)
- George Baldwin Seldenb. 1846USAmerican patent lawyer and inventor of a version of the automobile (1846–1922)
- Selden P. Spencerb. 1862USAmerican politician (1862–1925)
- George Seldenb. 1929USAmerican children's writer (1929-1989)
- Kyoko Iriye Seldenb. 1936JPborn:1936|died:2013-01-20|; Selden, Kyoko Iriye, 1936-; Irie, Kyōko 1936-....; Selden, Kyoko (Kyoko Iriye), 1936-2013; 入江, 恭子, 1936-; Selden, Kyoko Iriye
- Wayne Selden, Jr.b. 1994USAmerican basketball player (born 1994)
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 15 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,482 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.8K | #15,858 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.3K | #19,911 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 202 | #35,138 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 149 | #25,765 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 28 | #35,138 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1927 | 16 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1924 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1920 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1917 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1925 | 14 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1921 | 14 | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Selden mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Selden Farm, Sussex ('willow-valley') Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Selden have the most bearers?
- Selden is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled selden.
What do you want to know about Selden?
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/seldenThe 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, “Selden”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.