Holden

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from Holden, Lancashire or West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Robert de Holden 1285 AssLa

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/hoʊldən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Holden is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 4.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 5.1K
  • IEIreland≈1 in 6K

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)

≈130,000 people, est.

Sources
486 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from Holden, Lancashire or West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Robert de Holden 1285 AssLa

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Holden 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.

Where Holden is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈130,000 est.≈1 in 10K—Holden15
US United States#93334,8241 in 9.6K35KHolden486
GB United Kingdom#388≈15,000 est.≈1 in 4.5K4Holden255
ID Indonesia—≈5,000 est.≈1 in 54K—Holden32
AU Australia#602≈4,200 est.≈1 in 6.1K1Holden183
NO Norway—1,4081 in 3.9K1.4KHolden45
NZ New Zealand#443≈970 est.≈1 in 5.1K10Holden100
IE Ireland#566≈870 est.≈1 in 6K—Holden66

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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Holden is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, United Kingdom, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Hölden

  • Thai surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Thailand, Canada

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written โฮลเด้น, โฮลเดน

  • Russian surname15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Голден, Голдэн, Гольден, Golden, Góldén

58 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Holden 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 places in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, both so named from Old English hoi ‘hollow’, ‘sunken’, ‘deep’ + denu ‘valley’. Compare Holcombe.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, past participle of hold

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, Old English; from the deep valley.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • unexplained.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Danish, well-to-do, prosperous

    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)

190019201940196019802000William Holden, b. 1918Rebecca Holden, b. 1958Larry Holden, b. 1961Marjean Holden, b. 1964Laurie Holden, b. 1969Amanda Holden, b. 1971Gina Holden, b. 1975Jon Robert Holden, b. 1976Alexandra Holden, b. 1977Stuart Holden, b. 1985

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 55 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Holden
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201035K#1,008
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200034K#940
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202033K#1,048
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.4K#742
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025704—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2022703—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2021701—
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru 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)
  • 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 Holden mean, and where does it come from?
from Holden, Lancashire or West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Robert de Holden 1285 AssLa Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
How common is the name Holden?
In the United States, the national register counted 34,824 people named Holden in 2010, about 1 in 9.6 thousand residents.
How common is Holden compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Holden is the 388th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
In which country does Holden have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 134 thousand people named Holden in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled holden.
Where is Holden most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Holden is densest in Norway — about 1 in 3.9 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How do you pronounce Holden?
A machine transcription gives /hoʊldən/ (IPA) for English.

What do you want to know about Holden?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/holden

The 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, “Holden” — the 388th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Holden parses inside a full name →