Dillon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) person from Dilwyn, Herefordshire; (ii) from the Germanic personal name Dillo; (iii) Irish variant of de Leon; (iv) from Irish Gaelic Ó Duilledin; (v) Jewish surname from Dilon or de Leon
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 38 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈdɪlən/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Dillon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines≈1 in 870(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.5K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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)
- Record sources
- 500 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 873 (inferred from the name graph)
50,465 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Irish GaelicÓ(measured from records)
- Dilonor(measured from records)
(i) person from Dilwyn, Herefordshire; (ii) from the Germanic personal name Dillo; (iii) Irish variant of de Leon; (iv) from Irish Gaelic Ó Duilledin; (v) Jewish surname from Dilon or de Leon.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Dillon, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Dillon 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 | #605 | 50,465 | 1 in 6.6K | 57K | Dillon | 500 |
| GB United Kingdom | #608 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | 4 | Dillon | 242 |
| CA Canada | #668 | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | 3 | Dillon | 189 |
| AU Australia | #438 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | 3 | Dillon | 193 |
| IE Ireland | #193 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 19 | Dillon | 123 |
| NZ New Zealand | #556 | ≈920 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | 12 | Dillon | 86 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 873 | 73 | — | 2 |
50,465 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 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)Dillon 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, de Leon; widespread Irish family from Brittany, lands in Longford, Westmeath and Kilkenny; offshoots in Mayo and Sligo
as a nameIrish family names
In English, perhaps from OG Dillo with diminutive -on; first attested Geoffrey Dilun 1203 SPl (Sa)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Variant spelling of Dylan, based on an English surname of different origin. The 66 surname Dillon or Dyllon derives in part from a now extinct Norman French personal name of Germanic origin; in part it is a local name from Dilwyn in Hereford. Dilly ° Pet form of }Dilys and pDilwen, now sometimes used as an independent given name.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A surname from Irish of Irish origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, Diolún. A Hiberno-Norman family which has three branches (as Map). It has always been prominent in Irish history. Bibl. IF Map Meath, Westmeath and Roscommon. See Dillane
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)- James Dillonb. 1902IEIrish politician (1902–1986)
- C. Douglas Dillonb. 1909USUnited States Navy officer, art collector, Metropolitan museum chairman (1909-2003)
- Melinda Dillonb. 1939USAmerican actress (1939–2023)
- Denny Dillonb. 1951USactress, comedian
- Steve Dillonb. 1962GBBritish comic artist (1962–2016)
- Hugh Dillonb. 1963CACanadian musician and actor
- Matt Dillonb. 1964USAmerican actor
- Kevin Dillonb. 1965USAmerican actor
- Asia Kate Dillonb. 1984USAmerican actor and producer
- Paul Dillonb. 2000USAmerican 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)70 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 50K | #683 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 49K | #631 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 48K | #698 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Dillon mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person from Dilwyn, Herefordshire; (ii) from the Germanic personal name Dillo; (iii) Irish variant of de Leon; (iv) from Irish Gaelic Ó Duilledin; (v) Jewish surname from Dilon or de Leon. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Dillon?
- In English /ˈdɪlən/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Dillon have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 50 thousand people named Dillon, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dillon.
- How common is the name Dillon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 50,465 people named Dillon in 2010, about 1 in 6.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Dillon compared with other names?
- In the United States, Dillon is the 605th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Dillon?
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/dillonThe 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, “Dillon” — the 605th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.