Dawn initially debuted on the Top 1000 list of newborn girl names in America in 1915 and soon gained popularity. Indeed, the "dawn" of Dawn's prosperity has passed. In 2013, there were only 77 newborn girls called Dawn (compared to almost 16,000 in 1970). Dawn, on the other hand, is a great name to consider. It was originally used as an English unisex given name until it was adopted exclusively for females in 1969. Here are the top 10 names for newborn boys and girls: Adam James Andrew Jessica Sarah Tyler Zachery Now that you know some information about names generally, let's look at the data further specifically regarding Dawn and its variants. First, some terminology: "Vocabulary words include names that come from roots, parts of plants or animals, elements, and abstract ideas." Names that derive from places all have the same root ("dad") while those derived from people have two main roots: one for the father and one for the mother. For example, Michael is from mih-KEL-us while Melissa is from meh-SELL-ah. Dawn, like many other female names, comes from the root "daed", which means "father". Thus, it refers to a daughter who receives this name because her father has died. Other forms of the name Dawn include Dyan, Dian, Diane, Dayan, and Taya.