Harden
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Harden (West Riding of Yorkshire) or Haredene Wood, East Tisbury (Wiltshire); first attested Adam de Hardene 1214 P (Northumberland)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/hɑɹdn̩/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Harden is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 12K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K
- CACanada≈1 in 19K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 431 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.1K (inferred from the name graph)
26,617 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Harden (West Riding of Yorkshire) or Haredene Wood, East Tisbury (Wiltshire); first attested Adam de Hardene 1214 P (Northumberland). Also from Harden lands, Roxburgh; and possibly from the personal name Harden. Sometimes perhaps for Arden.
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Harden 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 | — | 26,617 | 1 in 12K | 27K | Harden | 431 |
| GH Ghana | #302 | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Harden | 14 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Harden | 183 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Harden | 6 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Harden | 120 |
| SY Syria | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Harden | 5 |
| IE Ireland | #708 | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | — | Harden | 23 |
26,617 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)
Harden 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.
habitational name from Harden in West Yorkshire, which gets its name from Old English hara ‘hare’ or hcer ‘rock’ + denu ‘valley’. Harden in Staffordshire, recorded in the Middle Ages as Haworthyn, Harwerthyn (from Old English heah ‘high’ -I- wordign ‘enclosure’), was probably not reduced to its modem form early enough to lie behind any examples of the surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
patronymic from a short form of a Germanic personal name with the first element hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Yorks., which get its name from OE hara Hare + denu valley (see Dean i). Harden in Staffs., which originally had the same name as Haioarden in Clwyd (from OE heah high + wordign enclosure) was probably not reduced to its modern form early enough to he behind any examples of the surname.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Giolla Deacair (see Hardy).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, To become hard.
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)
- Maximilian Hardenb. 1861DEGerman journalist (1861–1927)
- Arthur Hardenb. 1865GBBritish biochemist
- Wilbur Hardenb. 1924USAmerican jazz musician (1924–1969)
- Marcia Gay Hardenb. 1959USAmerican actress
- Tim Hardenb. 1974USAmerican athletics competitor
- Jonathan Hardenb. 1979GBNorthern Irish actor
- Rich Hardenb. 1981CACanadian baseball player
- Ty Hardenb. 1984USAmerican soccer player
- James Hardenb. 1989USAmerican basketball player (born 1989)
- SpotemGottemb. 2001USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper
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 36 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 27K | #1,322 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 26K | #1,333 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 25K | #1,284 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Harden mean, and where does it come from?
- from Harden (West Riding of Yorkshire) or Haredene Wood, East Tisbury (Wiltshire); first attested Adam de Hardene 1214 P (Northumberland). Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Harden?
- A machine transcription gives /hɑɹdn̩/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Harden have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 27 thousand people named Harden, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled harden.
- How common is the name Harden?
- In the United States, the national register counted 26,617 people named Harden in 2010, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
- How common is Harden compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Harden is the 302nd most common surname of 36,883 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Harden?
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/hardenThe 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, “Harden” — the 302nd most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.