There were Gondorians who were not Dúnedain, and so strictly speaking we cannot say for sure that Damrod belonged to that people. His commander Faramir spoke of his soldiers as if all of them were Dúnedain, however, so it seems overwhelmingly likely that Damrod was indeed a Dúnadan.

Damrod's name was one of several in The Lord of the Rings that Tolkien 'borrowed' from his then unpublished works. It originally belonged to the sixth son of Fëanor (called Amrod in later versions of The Silmarillion) and was adapted from Quenya Nambarauto, 'hammerer of copper', in reference to Amrod's smithwork. This complex origin was unlikely to apply in any literal sense to Damrod the Ranger of Ithilien; rather, he presumably acquired his name as a classical reference to a character of more ancient times.