Landon
- Pronunciation
- [Lan-don]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Long Hill
- Origin
- English
About the Name Landon
Landon is an English place-name and surname, derived from Old English lang (long) plus dūn (hill or down) — yielding "long hill" or "the long ridge." The surname identified medieval English families originating from settlements with this geography, particularly in the eastern Midlands. As a personal name, Landon was almost entirely unused before the 20th century; SSA records show fewer than a dozen baby Landons annually before 1980.
Landon's American emergence as a first name is part of the broader 20th-century shift toward occupational and surname-style names. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 1995 to the top 50 by 2008 and has held that range since. The single most visible historical bearer is American actor and television producer Michael Landon (1936–1991, born Eugene Maurice Orowitz) — using Landon as a surname, but his roles in Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven made the surname Landon familiar to American audiences for over three decades. Earlier, Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon (1887–1987) ran against FDR in 1936.
The name's appeal sits at the intersection of contemporary American naming preferences: surname-style, two firm syllables, hard consonants, the suggestion of dignified geographical heritage without specific cultural or religious baggage. Notable contemporary bearers are largely modern — NFL athletes Landon Donovan and Landon Collins. Common nicknames are scarce — Lan, Landy, and the rare Don occasionally appear; the alternate spelling Landen has its own SSA tracking. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is recent and English-specific.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Landon
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Landon by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2010 with 10,483 boys named Landon (boy rank #33 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #127 for boys (2,840 US births). That's 94 places below its 2010 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Landon Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Landon the strongest states are New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Ohio.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Hampshire | #47 | 253 |
| 2 | Wisconsin | #50 | 990 |
| 3 | Ohio | #52 | 2,064 |
| 4 | Michigan | #54 | 1,614 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #54 | 2,190 |
| 6 | Mississippi | #54 | 512 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #55 | 826 |
| 8 | Delaware | #56 | 176 |
| 9 | Vermont | #57 | 85 |
| 10 | Maine | #57 | 216 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | #172 | 52 |
| 2 | Utah | #137 | 368 |
| 3 | Oklahoma | #112 | 444 |
| 4 | California | #112 | 3,725 |
| 5 | Arizona | #107 | 765 |
| 6 | Nevada | #106 | 308 |
| 7 | Texas | #104 | 3,516 |
| 8 | New Mexico | #99 | 208 |
| 9 | Idaho | #95 | 224 |
| 10 | Alaska | #95 | 115 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Landon in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landen | Long Hill. | Male | English |
Looking for names like Landon?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Landon to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Landon against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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