Worden
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Worden, Lancashire; probably 'valley with a weir'
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Worden is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 23Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 26K
- PEPeru≈1 in 11Mfew records
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. 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
- 383 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
11,135 named Warden, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Jamaica, 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, AU Australia 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'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Worden is found
(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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 11,135as Warden | 1 in 30K | 11K | Warden | 383 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 22K | 2.7K | Warden | 167 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 1 | Worden | 111 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Warden | 107 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 86K | — | Warden | 26 |
| IE Ireland | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Warden | 14 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Worden | 1 |
| GY Guyana | 51as Warden | 1 in 15K | 51 | — | 2 |
11,135 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; 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)- Hank Wordenb. 1901USAmerican actor (1901-1992)
- Alfred Wordenb. 1932USAmerican astronaut (1932–2020)
- 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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.
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].
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Worden?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Warden, more than in any other country we hold. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- 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 2026-10-13.