Dylon
Masculine · “Welsh "sea" or "great tide”
Dylan was a dead name until the nineteenth century. It sat in a medieval Welsh manuscript, unused, until Welsh national revival went looking for native names to replace the biblical ones — and the poet Dylan Thomas, born 1914, was one of the first modern bearers. Every Dylan since descends from that revival.
How old is the name Dylon?
Dylon first appears in US birth records in 1973 — 52 years ago. The typical Dylon alive today was born around 2000, making them about 25 years old. About 4,400 people named Dylon are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Dylon most popular?
Dylon peaked in 1992, reaching #641 nationally. Today it ranks #7194, 6,553 places below that high. See the whole 1992 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Dylan to Dylon
The story of Dylon
The chain is unusually well documented. Welsh literary revival in the 1800s brought medieval names back into use. Dylan Thomas's parents gave him one of them in 1914, and by his death in 1953 he was famous enough in America to be a reference point. Robert Zimmerman took the stage name Dylan in the early 1960s — he has attributed it to the poet and, in other tellings, to an uncle named Dillion — and his fame is what carried the name into general American use, where it was almost unknown before. So a name recovered from a fourteenth-century manuscript reached ordinary American families through a Welsh poet and a folk singer inside fifty years. The respellings, Dylon among them, peak in 1992 alongside the parent name.
Meaning
Welsh "sea" or "great tide"
Dylan ail Don appears in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, a collection of Welsh tales written down in the fourteenth century from older material. The name is read as the sea, or as dy, great, with llanw, tide. Dylon with an o is an American respelling; the unstressed final vowel is a schwa and carries no information, so the o changes nothing audible.
How the name formed
- Dylan
- Dylon
Related forms: Dylan · Dillon
Pronouncing Dylon
DILL-un
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the second reduced to a schwa. The o spelling sounds identical to the a spelling; Welsh says the first vowel short, as in tin.
Nicknames for Dylon
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
- 1973
- Most boys named
- 1992258 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #641reached in 1992
- Change vs 2024
- −42.1%11 in 2025, from 19
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.
Dylon in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Dylan in Welsh — spelling variant
- Dillon in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Dylons among us
people named Dylon are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 155,280 born in 2025 was named Dylon
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Dylon
- #7194
- Dylon on the 2025 chart
- #673
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Dylon went to 11 boys in 2025, but Dillon is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 264, which makes it the 673rd most-given boys’ name of the year — 6,521 places above the chart.
- Dillon253
- Dylon11
About 1 boy in 6,470 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 155,280 for Dylon itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Arlin test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Dylon's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Arlin climbed just as high around 1935, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Arlin's path sketches the road Dylon is walking now.
Dylon sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Dylon beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Dylon in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The base name has a settled Welsh meaning and a documented literary revival.
- It is said exactly like Dylan and never mispronounced.
- Two syllables and six letters, easy to write.
- Dylan is overwhelmingly the standard spelling and will be substituted.
- Dillon is an unrelated Irish surname that shares the sound.
- The 1990s peak dates a bearer fairly precisely.
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What they receive
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Dylon
Masculine · #7194 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Dylons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,400 people named Dylon are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Dylon?
- Dylon is one of 2 recorded spellings. Dillon is the more common one — 253 births in 2025 against 11 for Dylon.
- How popular is the name Dylon in 2025?
- Dylon ranks #7194 among US boy names in 2025, with 11 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Dylon?
- About 1 in every 155,280 US boys born in 2025 was named Dylon — 11 in all.
- Will my child share the name Dylon with classmates?
- Dylon will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Dylon
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Junius#7194 · Orie#7194 · Shade#7194 · Chesley#7194 · Joesph#7194 · Lofton#7194 · Macon#7194 · Benjiman#7194
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Dylon? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Dylon and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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