Dayan (surname)

This article is about The Hebrew surname. For other uses, see Dayan (disambiguation).

Dayan (דיין) is a Hebrew surname. It means a Jewish religious judge in a Beth din—a position conferring social prestige in a traditional Jewish community, and therefore one whose memory is likely to be retained as a family's surname even after the passage of many generations.

Notable persons with the surname include:

• Moshe Dayan (1915–1981), Israeli military leader and politician
  • Shmuel Dayan (1891–1968), Zionist activist and Israeli politician (father of Moshe)
  • Ruth Dayan (born 1917), widow of Moshe
  • Assi Dayan (1945–2014), Israeli film director, actor (son of Moshe)
  • Yael Dayan (born 1939), Israeli politician and author (daughter of Moshe)
  • Uzi Dayan (born 1948), Israeli general and politician (nephew of Moshe)
  • Ilana Dayan (born 1964), Israeli investigative journalist, jurist and anchorwoman (relative)
  • Amalia Dayan, Owner of New York gallery Luxemburg and Dayan (daughter of Assi)

• Charles Dayan (1792–1877), American lawyer and politician
• Charles Dayan (real estate developer) (born 1941), American real estate developer
• Colin Dayan, American professor
• Daniel Dayan (born 1943), social scientist
• David Ben Dayan (born 1978), Israeli football player
• Haim Dayan (born 1960), Israeli politician
• Peter Dayan, neuroscience scholar
• Roei Dayan (born 1984), Israeli football player
• Yosef Dayan (born 1945), Israeli political activist

Notable persons with the given name Dayan (not always linguistically related) include:

• Dayan Khan (1464–1517), Mongol Khan
• Dayán Viciedo (born 1989), Cuban baseball player
• David Dayan Fisher, British actor

See also

• Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies