Durham
A masculine given name from a place name, originating from Old English meaning "hill valley".
Name Census estimates that about 228 living Americans carry the first name Durham. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Durham today is around 18 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Durham births was 2009 (19 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Durham. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
People living today
228
~ 1 in 1,503,309 Americans
Peak year
2009
19 babies that year
Average age
18
years old
2024 SSA rank
#7,874
Tracked since 1915
Census
Durham in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 302 people with the first name Durham, which placed it at #29,353 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#29,353
National first-name rank
People counted
302
302 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
0.1
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
80.5% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Durham
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Durham is White at 80.5%. The next largest groups are Black (8.6%) and Two or More Races (5.3%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Durham described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Durham at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White80.5% · 243
- Black or African American8.6% · 26
- Two or more races5.3% · 16
- Hispanic or Latino5.0% · 15
- Asian and Pacific Islander0.7% · 2
Popularity
Durham: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Durham from the 1910s through to the 2020s, spanning 8 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 2010s, with 92 total registrations. Although the numbers have come down from the 2010s peak, Durham remains solidly in use and shows no sign of disappearing from maternity wards.
Babies born per year
Decades
Durham by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Durham during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Origin
Meaning and history of Durham
The name Durham is an English toponymic surname derived from the city of Durham in northern England. The city's name itself comes from an Old English phrase meaning "the hill valley" or "the valley on the hill."
Durham was originally recorded in the 10th century as Dunholme, formed from the Old English words "dun" meaning hill and "holmr" meaning island or dry ground in a marsh. Over time, the name evolved through spellings like Dunelm, Dunholm, and Dureaume before arriving at its modern form.
One of the earliest known references to the name comes from the Venerable Bede's 8th century work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He refers to the area as "Dunholm" when recounting events around 635 AD involving the missionary efforts of Aidan of Lindisfarne.
A famous early bearer of the name was Cuthbert of Durham (c. 634–687), an Anglo-Saxon monk and Christian saint closely associated with the city. The Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the most spectacular examples of Hiberno-Saxon medieval insular art, was likely created at Durham in the early 8th century.
Other notable individuals named Durham include Henry Durham (c. 1605–1692), a Scottish Presbyterian minister and Oxford University chancellor known for his controversial writings. John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792–1840) was a British Whig statesman who played a key role in the Rebellion of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada.
George Durham (1828–1905) was a British lawyer and politician who served as Solicitor General for England and Wales. Thomas Durham (1887–1970) was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Derbyshire between 1908 and 1920. Harold Percy Durham (1908–1988) was a Canadian historian and archivist who made significant contributions to the understanding of the fur trade in western Canada.
People
Durham + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Durham as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with D
Other first names starting with D with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Durham: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Durham?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 228 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Durham going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 1,503,309 US residents.
Is Durham a common name?
We classify Durham as "Very Rare". It ranks above 75.9% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 303 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Durham most popular?
The single biggest year for Durham was 2009, when 19 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Durham is about 18 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Durham in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 302 people with the name Durham, or 0.10 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #29,353 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Durham in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Durham?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Durham leans strongly male. 281 people counted with this name were male (95.6%), compared with 13 female bearers (4.4%). The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Durham?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Durham is White at 80.5%. The next largest groups are Black (8.6%) and Two or More Races (5.3%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Durham most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Durham in the 2020 Census, accounting for 80.5% (243 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Durham in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Durham a male name?
Yes, 100.0% of people registered as Durham in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Durham still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Durham in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Durham can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many people share the name Durham?
Find out how many people have the name Durham on our sister site HowManyOfMe.org — a quick modern estimate with the living-bearer count front and centre.