Worden
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Worden, Lancashire; probably 'valley with a weir'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈwɝdən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Worden is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 28K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 24Kas Warden
- USUnited States1 in 30Kas Warden
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Worden itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 383 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 25K (inferred from the name graph)
≈45,000 named Warden, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hungary, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Warden in US United States, GB United Kingdom, EG Egypt and 2 more.
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)
person from Worden, Lancashire; probably 'valley with a weir'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Worden 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 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Worden | 9 |
| US United States | 11,135as Warden | 1 in 30K | 11K | Warden | 383 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 2.7K | Warden | 167 |
| EG Egypt | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Warden | 5 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 28K | 1 | Worden | 111 |
| HU Hungary | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Warden | 2 |
| IE Ireland | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Warden | 14 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Worden | 1 |
| GY Guyana | 51as Warden | 1 in 15K | 51 | — | 2 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Worden 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.
In English, near Chorley. Early forms consistently show the first syl¬ lable as Wer-, and the name is probably derived from OE wer weir (see Ware i) + denu valley (see Dean i).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In dum, first/third-person plural past indicative/subjunctive of werden
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, to become, to get, to grow, to turn
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ang, past participle of weorþan
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, past participle of werden
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)
- John Lorimer Wordenb. 1818USUnited States Navy admiral
- Francis Lyman Wordenb. 1830USAmerican businessman (1830-1887)
- Hank Wordenb. 1901USAmerican actor (1901-1992)
- Neil Wordenb. 1931USAmerican football player
- Alfred Wordenb. 1932USAmerican astronaut (1932–2020)
- Ken Wordenb. 1943AUEnglish soccer player/coach
- Pete Wordenb. 1949USHead of NASA Amese Research centre
- Terry Taylorb. 1955USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler
- Alexandra Wordenb. 1970USAmerican microbiologist
- Marc Wordenb. 1976CACanadian actor
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 12 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.1K | #3,880 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.9K | #3,662 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.7K | #3,977 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.2K | #5,570 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Worden mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Worden, Lancashire; probably 'valley with a weir' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Worden?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈwɝdən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Worden have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 45 thousand people named Warden in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Worden?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,135 people named Warden in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Worden?
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/wordenThe 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, “Worden”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.