Daulton
Masculine · “valley settlement”
Daulton is Dalton with an au, and the man the surname is best known for gave his name to two things: a unit of atomic mass and, across much of Europe, color blindness itself. He described his own condition in detail because he had it, left instructions for his eyes to be examined after his death, and got the whole thing slightly wrong in a way that took two centuries to correct.
How old is the name Daulton?
Daulton first appears in US birth records in 1916 — 109 years ago. The typical Daulton alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 1,500 people named Daulton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Daulton most popular?
Daulton peaked in 1994, reaching #792 nationally. See the whole 1994 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From An Old English place name meaning valley settlement to Daulton
The story of Daulton
John Dalton could not distinguish the colors other people described, and rather than treat it as a private oddity he wrote the first scientific paper on the subject, in which he proposed that the fluid inside his own eye must be tinted blue. He was wrong: the condition is in the cone cells of the retina, not in the humor, and when his preserved eyes were finally tested with modern methods they turned out to lack one type of cone. But the paper was the first serious description of the phenomenon, and in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian the condition is still named after him. He also worked out that matter is made of atoms of different weights, which is why the unit of atomic mass carries his name too. Very few people are commemorated in both a physical unit and a medical term.
Meaning
valley settlement
The surname is a place name from Old English, joining the word for a valley with the word for a settlement or farmstead, and it is attached to a great many villages in the north of England. The reading is not in dispute. The au spelling is an American respelling of the first vowel and adds nothing to the sense; it borrows the look of names like Paul without borrowing anything else.
How the name formed
- An Old English place name meaning valley settlement
- A surname carried across the north of England
- Used as an American first name
- Daulton, with the vowel respelled
Pronouncing Daulton
DAWL-tun
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the second reduced almost to nothing. For most American speakers the au and the plain a produce the same vowel here, so the respelling changes the look and not the sound.
Nicknames for Daulton
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1916
- Most boys named
- 1994178 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #792reached in 1994
- Change vs 2021
- 0.0%7 in 2024, from 7
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Daulton in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: Pennsylvania.
Daultons among us
people named Daulton are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Daulton sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The sound is entirely familiar and needs no coaching.
- It has a concrete place-name meaning that can be explained in a sentence.
- It carries a genuinely interesting scientist without being obviously a homage.
- Dalton is the standard spelling and this one will be corrected into it constantly.
- The au adds nothing audible, so the spelling must be given every time.
- It reads as a surname to many people, which is accurate and still needs explaining.
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Daulton
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Daultons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,500 people named Daulton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Daulton in 2025?
- Daulton is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Daulton with classmates?
- Daulton will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
David#35 · Daniel#22 · Donald#690 · Dennis#707 · Douglas#807 · Dylan#41 · Danny#628 · Dale#1409
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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