Boy · Old English
Dunstan
Say it: DUN-stahn
Meaning
From Old English stān 'stone' and dunn 'dark, dull brown' or possibly dūn 'hill'.
Likelythe main view, with some doubt.
Kept in occasional use by the fame of St Dunstan, the 10th-century reforming archbishop.
Its wave through time
Rare in the records
In the United States
- 5 babies given this name since 1976
- At its height in 1976, about 1 in 314,000 boys
- Fewer than 5 babies a year in 2020
Through the ages
- The Viking and Anglo-Saxon Age700 to 1100
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
Used by
Famous bearers
- St Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Anglo-Saxon charters, chronicles and church records
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.