Láu
surname · Latin script
Meaning: shrewd; cunning; artful; (of a child) smart; clever
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Láu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 11K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 9K
- NLNetherlands1 in 25K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 50 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.0K (inferred from the name graph)
29,792 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lau in US United States, NL Netherlands, HK Hong Kong.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
shrewd; cunning; artful; (of a child) smart; clever
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Láu counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 29,792 | 1 in 11K | 30K | Lau | 50 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 683 | 1 in 25K | 683 | Lau | 9 |
| DK Denmark | — | 651 | 1 in 9K | 1.2K | — | — |
| PL Poland | — | 413 | 1 in 93K | 212 | — | — |
| ES Spain | — | 293 | 1 in 171K | 293 | — | 13 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 286 | 1 in 29K | 286 | — | 4 |
| FI Finland | — | 167 | 1 in 33K | 167 | — | 2 |
| HK Hong Kong | #410 | — | — | 352 | Lau | 30 |
29,792 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); This page contains a database of Hong Konger surnames and first names categorized by frequency and gender, published by; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Láu mean, and where does it come from?
- shrewd; cunning; artful; (of a child) smart; clever Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Láu have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 30 thousand people named Láu, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lau.
- Where is Láu most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Láu is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 9.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Láu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 29,792 people named Láu in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Láu compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Láu is the 410th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Láu?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%C3%A1uThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Láu” — the 410th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.