Dawley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A small town in Great Dawley parish, Telford and Wrekin borough, in the ceremonial county of Shropshire, England (OS grid ref SJ6807)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈdɔɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Dawley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 134K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 136K
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 100K
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
- 262 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 100K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Switzerland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A small town in Great Dawley parish, Telford and Wrekin borough, in the ceremonial county of Shropshire, England (OS grid ref SJ6807).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dawley 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 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 129K | — | Dawley | 2 |
| US United States | 2,439 | 1 in 136K | 2.4K | Dawley | 262 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 134K | — | Dawley | 37 |
| CA Canada | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 125K | — | Dawley | 52 |
| IT Italy | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 224K | — | Dawley | 4 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈84 est. | ≈1 in 100K | — | Dawley | 1 |
| IE Ireland | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 122K | — | Dawley | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 128K | — | Dawley | 4 |
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. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Henry Dawleyb. 1646GBEnglish politician, of Lainston House, Sparsholt, Hampshire (c.1646-c.1703)
- J. Searle Dawleyb. 1877USAmerican director and screenwriter (1877-1949)
- Herbert M. Dawleyb. 1880USAmerican actor, film producer and screenwriter (1880-1970)
- Ernest J. Dawleyb. 1886USUnited States Army Major general (1886–1973)
- Powel Mills Dawleyb. 1907USAmerican church historian and Episcopalian priest
- Alan Dawleyb. 1943USAmerican historian (1943–2008)
- Bill Dawleyb. 1958USAmerican baseball player
- Sharon Dawleyb. 1961USAmerican college basketball coach
- Michelle Dawleyactress
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 9 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.4K | #12,670 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,526 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.3K | #12,566 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Dawley mean, and where does it come from?
- A small town in Great Dawley parish, Telford and Wrekin borough, in the ceremonial county of Shropshire, England (OS grid ref SJ6807). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Dawley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdɔɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Dawley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Dawley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dawley.
- How common is the name Dawley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,439 people named Dawley in 2010, about 1 in 136 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dawley?
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/dawleyThe 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, “Dawley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.