Dark
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person with dark hair or a dark complexion
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dɑɹk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Dark is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 47K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 56K
- USUnited States1 in 133K
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)
- Sources
- 287 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 20K (inferred from the name graph)
2,507 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person with dark hair or a dark complexion
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dark 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 | 2,507 | 1 in 133K | 2.9K | Dark | 287 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 56K | listed | Dark | 158 |
| IT Italy | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 94K | — | Dark | 18 |
| AU Australia | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Dark | 108 |
| BR Brazil | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 462K | 258 | — | 3 |
| SG Singapore | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Dark | 10 |
| CA Canada | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 132K | — | Dark | 77 |
2,507 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 2000; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; IBGE — Nomes (census name API). 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)
Dark 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, from OE deorc ‘dark’ of complexion; first attested Robert Derck 1221 AssWa
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, dark complexion, from ME darke, OE deorc dark. The sur¬ name is most frequently found in the W Country.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Having an absolute or (more often) relative lack of light.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, kpindi; very dark night, kpindi nili
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Italian, dark (used especially to describe a form of punk music)
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)
- Eleanor Darkb. 1901AUTwentieth-century Australian novelist (1901–1985)
- Christopher Darkb. 1920USAmerican actor (1920-1971)
- Alvin Darkb. 1922USAmerican baseball player and manager (1922-2014)
- John Darkb. 1927GBBritish film producer
- Danny Darkb. 1938USAmerican announcer and voice actor (1938–2004)
- Jacqueline Darkb. 1967AUAustralian opera mezzo-soprano
- Anita Darkb. 1975HUHungarian pornographic actress
- Angel Darkb. 1982SKpornographic performer (b. 1982)
- Jennifer Darkb. 1982CZCzech pornographic actress
- Lauren DarkGBfilm producer
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 22 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.4K | #2,472 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.9K | #10,294 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.5K | #12,399 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.1K | #13,843 |
| 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
- 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 Dark mean, and where does it come from?
- person with dark hair or a dark complexion Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Dark?
- In the etymology graph, Darke is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Dark?
- A machine transcription gives /dɑɹk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Dark have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Dark, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dark.
- How common is the name Dark?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,507 people named Dark in 2010, about 1 in 133 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dark?
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/darkThe 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, “Dark”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.