Donaldson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘son of Donald’; first attested Henry Donaldson 1339–40 Black
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 22 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Donaldson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.3K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 497 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)
36,558 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
New Zealand, 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)‘son of Donald’; first attested Henry Donaldson 1339–40 Black
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Donaldson 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #784 | 36,558 | 1 in 9.1K | 37K | Donaldson | 497 |
| GB United Kingdom | #479 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Donaldson | 254 |
| AU Australia | #420 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Donaldson | 193 |
| CA Canada | #632 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | — | Donaldson | 201 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Donaldson | 54 |
| NZ New Zealand | #264 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Donaldson | 141 |
| IE Ireland | #634 | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Donaldson | 53 |
36,558 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Donaldson is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Patronymic of Donald; first noted as filius Donaldi, present form from 1339 in Edinburgh Castle records.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, A surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son of Donald’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)- Walter Donaldsonb. 1893USAmerican songwriter (1893-1947)
- Lou Donaldsonb. 1926USAmerican saxophonist (1926–2024)
- Ted Donaldsonb. 1933USAmerican actor
- Roger Donaldsonb. 1945AUNew Zealand film director
- Julia Donaldsonb. 1948GBEnglish children's writer
- Simon Donaldsonb. 1957GBEnglish mathematician
- James Donaldsonb. 1957GBBritish-American basketball player
- Mary Donaldsonb. 1972AUQueen consort of Denmark since 2024
- Lily Donaldsonb. 1987GBEnglish model
- MrBeastb. 1998USnot in their usual nameAmerican YouTuber, media personality and businessman (born 1998)
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)38 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 37K | #950 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 35K | #897 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 35K | #982 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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)
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 Donaldson mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘son of Donald’; first attested Henry Donaldson 1339–40 Black Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Donaldson have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 37 thousand people named Donaldson, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled donaldson.
- How common is the name Donaldson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 36,558 people named Donaldson in 2010, about 1 in 9.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Donaldson compared with other names?
- In the United States, Donaldson is the 784th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Donaldson?
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/donaldsonThe 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, “Donaldson” — the 784th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.