Walden

Walden is the 1,510th most common surname in the United States, shared by 23,046 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 13,000.

By the numbers

People: 23,046
Rank: 1,510th
How common: 1 in 13,000
Per 100,000: 7.7

Where the name comes from

From Old English walh (“Welshman”), genitive plural wala + denu (“valley”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Walden described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 74.8%
Black, not Hispanic 15.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Walden

Paul Walden (1863–1957)Baltic German chemist
Ricky Walden (born 1982)English snooker player
Narada Michael Walden (born 1952)American musician
Greg Walden (born 1957)American politician
Rudolf Walden (1878–1946)Finnish industrialist, general and politician
Harold Walden (1887–1955)English footballer
Robert Walden (born 1943)American actor
Corey Walden (born 1992)American basketball player

People named Walden with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Walden

Also a first name

Walden has been given to 1,527 American babies as a first name since 1908, peaking in 2023. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.