Daft
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE gedæft ‘gentle, meek’, ME daffte ‘foolish, stupid’; first attested John, Robert Daft c1230 NottBR, 1242 Fees (Nt)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/dæft/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Daft is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 731K(measured from records)
- IEIreland≈1 in 315K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 317K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 159 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 315K (inferred from the name graph)
455 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from OE gedæft ‘gentle, meek’, ME daffte ‘foolish, stupid’; first attested John, Robert Daft c1230 NottBR, 1242 Fees (Nt).
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Daft 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 | 455 | 1 in 731K | 505 | Daft | 159 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 361K | listed | Daft | 66 |
| DE Germany | ≈91 est. | ≈1 in 884K | — | Daft | 27 |
| AU Australia | ≈72 est. | ≈1 in 352K | — | Daft | 39 |
| PL Poland | 53 | 1 in 722K | 27 | — | — |
| IE Ireland | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 315K | — | Daft | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 317K | — | Daft | 1 |
455 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)Daft is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Foolish, silly, stupid.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, From a medieval nickname for a meek or gentle person; modern 'weak-minded' sense is later.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In enm, alternative form of defte
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)- Richard Daftb. 1835GBEnglish cricketer (1835-1900)
- Leo Daftb. 1843USBritish engineer (1843–1922)
- Richard Daftb. 1863GBBritish cricketer (1863-1934)
- Harry Daftb. 1866GBEnglish footballer (1866-1945)
- Richard L. Daftb. 1941USbusiness management researcher
- Douglas Daftb. 1943AUAustralian businessman
- Kevin Daftb. 1975USformer professional American football quarterback
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)11 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 505 | #45,616 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 473 | #43,058 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 455 | #46,725 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 27 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 27 | #74,380 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 26 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 26 | #75,887 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Daft mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE gedæft ‘gentle, meek’, ME daffte ‘foolish, stupid’; first attested John, Robert Daft c1230 NottBR, 1242 Fees (Nt). Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Daft?
- In the etymology graph, Добрый is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Daft?
- A machine transcription gives /dæft/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Daft have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 455 people named Daft, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled daft.
- How common is the name Daft?
- In the United States, the national register counted 455 people named Daft in 2010, about 1 in 731 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Daft?
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/daftThe 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, “Daft”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.