Dawn: Meaning of Baby Name Dawn

About the Name Dawn

Dawn is a straightforward English vocabulary name meaning the first light of day — the moment of sunrise — and it belongs to the broader twentieth-century tradition of naming girls after natural phenomena and times of day. Its appeal lies in its immediate sensory clarity: a single syllable that evokes light, renewal, and beginning. Unlike many nature names that required archaic or foreign dress to enter the naming mainstream, Dawn needed no translation or adaptation.

One of its most recognisable bearers is Dawn French, born 1957, a Welsh-English actress, comedian, and writer whose four-decade career has produced multiple defining late-20th and early-21st-century English TV-comedy roles — particularly her 1994–2007 lead role as Rev. Geraldine Granger in The Vicar of Dibley. French's enduring presence in British popular culture has kept the name associated with warmth, wit, and creative talent.

Dawn first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1956 and surged to its peak of #14 in 1971, placing it squarely in the late-1960s and early-1970s wave of nature and light-themed names. It last appeared in the top-1000 in 2000 at rank #910, marking the close of a roughly 44-year chart run. Recorded variants — Dawna, Dawne, and Dawnelle — offered parents slight personalisation of the same bright sound.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Dawn

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

2,251

English female names

86

4-letter D-names in our dictionary

491

D-female names total

1956–2000

years of US SSA records (28 total)

242,242

total US births named Dawn (all years)

US Popularity History (1956–2000)

Annual US births named Dawn by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1970 with 15,681 girls named Dawn (girl rank #16 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2000, ranked #910 for girls (240 US births). That's 894 places below its 1970 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.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Dawna	The First Appearance Of Daylight: Daybreak.	Female	English
Dawne	The First Appearance Of Daylight: Daybreak.	Female	English
Dawnelle	The First Appearance Of Daylight: Daybreak.	Female	English

Famous People Named Dawn

1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Dawn.

Dawn French — TV Actress (1957)

Browse more famous Dawns and similar first names →

Looking for names like Dawn?

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.

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Compare Dawn to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Dawn against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Dawn vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Dawn vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Dawn vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Dawn vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Dawn vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Dawn vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Dawn vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Dawn vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →