Runyon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Runaidhin, ‘descendant of Runaidhin’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɹənjən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Runyon is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- CACanada
- GBUnited Kingdom
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Irish Gaelic Ó Runaidhin, ‘descendant of Runaidhin’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Runyon is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Damon, US author
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Theodore Runyonb. 1822USUnion United States Army general (1822–1896)
- William Nelson Runyonb. 1871USAmerican politician (1871-1931)
- Damon Runyonb. 1880USAmerican writer (1880–1946)
- Robert Runyonb. 1881USAmerican mayor, photographer and botanist (1881-1968)
- Marie M. Runyonb. 1915USAmerican politician in New York (1915-2018)
- Charles Runyonb. 1928USAmerican science fiction, thriller and horror writer
- Theodore Runyonb. 1930theologian (born 1930)
- Carol Anne Runyon Mahsunb. 1938USart historian
- Brent Runyonb. 1957USAmerican writer
- Jennifer Runyonb. 1960USAmerican actress (1960-2026)
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 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.2K | #3,872 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.1K | #3,577 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.7K | #3,961 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 8 | #167,220 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 6 | #89,778 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Runyon mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Ó Runaidhin, ‘descendant of Runaidhin’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Runyon?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹənjən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Runyon have the most bearers?
- Runyon is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Runyon?
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/runyonThe 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, “Runyon”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.