Dayton
- Pronunciation
- [Day-ton]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Surname. Variant Of David Beloved.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Dayton
Dayton is an English surname-derived given name whose place-name origins connect it to several locations in the English-speaking world, most prominently the city of Dayton in Ohio — a midwestern American city with a history tied to industry, aviation, and American manufacturing heritage. The surname Dayton itself may relate to Old English elements meaning "David's town" or "bright town," though like many compound place-name surnames the exact etymology varies by location. As a given name, Dayton carries the characteristic appeal of American place-name transfers: geographic pride, a clean two-syllable structure, and the confident, surname-on-the-front quality that American parents have long favored.
Dayton fits comfortably among a cohort of American masculine names that channel a kind of open, frontier-adjacent energy — alongside names like Colton, Clayton, Peyton, and Layton, all of which share the -ton suffix derived from "town" and project a similar rugged yet approachable masculinity. The rhyming family created by these names was a defining feature of American naming in the 2000s and 2010s, offering parents a wide menu of choices that all shared a recognizable sonic profile.
Dayton first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 and reached its peak rank of #486 in 2008. It remained in the top-1000 through 2020, sitting at #980 in its final tracked year, having accumulated approximately 8,259 top-1000 births across two decades of consistent presence. The gradual tapering through the 2010s reflects the broader cooling of the -ton name family rather than any specific loss of appeal.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Dayton
US Popularity History (2000–2020)
Annual US births named Dayton by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2008 with 568 boys named Dayton (boy rank #486 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2020, ranked #980 for boys (218 US births). That's 494 places below its 2008 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 Dayton 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 Dayton the strongest states are Kansas, Idaho, Arkansas.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kansas | #386 | 49 |
| 2 | Idaho | #394 | 16 |
| 3 | Arkansas | #509 | 36 |
| 4 | Iowa | #535 | 17 |
| 5 | Oklahoma | #547 | 56 |
| 6 | Mississippi | #555 | 15 |
| 7 | Missouri | #567 | 96 |
| 8 | South Carolina | #574 | 21 |
| 9 | Alabama | #594 | 36 |
| 10 | Louisiana | #611 | 55 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pennsylvania | #948 | 39 |
| 2 | Ohio | #942 | 27 |
| 3 | Illinois | #908 | 36 |
| 4 | North Carolina | #903 | 24 |
| 5 | Georgia | #889 | 46 |
| 6 | Tennessee | #787 | 69 |
| 7 | Arizona | #777 | 27 |
| 8 | Washington | #745 | 41 |
| 9 | Indiana | #733 | 63 |
| 10 | Minnesota | #714 | 19 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Dayton in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Dayton?
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 Dayton to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Dayton against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).