Dawson
Meaning
surname, "son of David"
The story
Dawson wears its family tree openly: an English surname meaning son of David, with all of David's beloved warmth folded inside it. For a hundred years it barely moved in American records, holding the same faint line from the 1890s through the 1980s. Then a television teenager named Dawson Leery arrived in 1998, and the name jumped in the records in the very same decade Dawson's Creek ruled teen television; we cannot prove the connection, but the timing is hard to ignore. More surprising is what happened after the show faded: instead of receding like many screen-born names, Dawson kept climbing through the 2000s and 2010s and holds its record level in the 2020s. The creek dried up; the name kept flowing.
Dawson around the world
One shared root links 7 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: from Hebrew Dawid "beloved", the shepherd king
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Dawson peaked in the 2010s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
218 people · the #23,913 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 38
Among people named Dawson living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Dawson
Most people given the name Dawson in the United States are children or teenagers today. The name belongs to this generation.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Dawson deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Dawson truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Dawson fits with your family’s names and surname.
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