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 people with the surname include:

• Shmuel Dayan (1891–1968), Zionist activist and Israeli politician (father of Moshe)
  • Moshe Dayan (1915–1981), Israeli military leader and politician
  • Ruth Dayan (1917–2021), 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)
    • Dani Dayan (born 1955), Chairman of Yad Vashem (relative)
    • Ilana Dayan (born 1964), Israeli investigative journalist, jurist and anchorwoman (relative)
• 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
• Dedi Ben Dayan (born 1978), Israeli football player
• Haim Dayan (born 1960), Israeli politician
• Michele Dayan (born 1961), Israeli football player and manager
• Emilia Dayan (fl. 1870), Egyptian stage actress
• Peter Dayan, neuroscience scholar
• Rebecca Dayan, French-American actress and model
• Roei Dayan (born 1984), Israeli football player
• Yosef Dayan (born 1945), Israeli political activist

See also

• Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
• Dayan (given name)

Surname list

This page lists people with the surname Dayan.
If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.