Dawson
#143 in the US in 2025
Dawson in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 54% as a share of boys' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Dawson in New Zealand
Dawson never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | #814 | 7 |
| 1900 | #1,310 | 5 |
| 1910 | #981 | 11 |
| 1920 | #1,252 | 33 |
| 1930 | #1,559 | 22 |
| 1940 | #1,227 | 30 |
| 1950 | #1,364 | 28 |
| 1960 | #1,973 | 17 |
| 1970 | #1,743 | 25 |
| 1980 | #1,910 | 29 |
| 1990 | #1,383 | 65 |
| 2000 | #168 | 2,312 |
| 2010 | #289 | 1,168 |
| 2020 | #197 | 1,918 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Dawson most often since 1885. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Texas | 3,486 |
| Georgia | 2,425 |
| North Carolina | 2,134 |
| Florida | 2,084 |
| Ohio | 2,063 |
| Tennessee | 1,984 |
| California | 1,881 |
| Michigan | 1,809 |
| Pennsylvania | 1,808 |
| Indiana | 1,765 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026