Lẫu

surname · Latin script

Lẫu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Cantonese 劉/刘 (lau4), Hokkien 劉/刘 (Lâu) or Teochew 劉/刘 (lao5). Doublet of Luu.

  • DKDenmark1 in 9K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 11K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 25K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

29,792 people, 2010

Record sources
50 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 9.0K (inferred from the name graph)

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)

From Cantonese 劉/刘 (lau4), Hokkien 劉/刘 (Lâu) or Teochew 劉/刘 (lao5). Doublet of Luu.

Cited for this meaning 4

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Lẫu is found

(measured from records)

Lẫu 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.

Where Lẫu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—29,7921 in 11K30KLau50
NL Netherlands—6831 in 25K683Lau9
DK Denmark—6511 in 9K1.2K——
PL Poland—4131 in 93K212——
ES Spain—2931 in 171K293—13
CH Switzerland—2861 in 29K286—4
FI Finland—1671 in 33K167—2
HK Hong Kong#410——352Lau30

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).

Other names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Lẫu is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, United States, Brazil, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Lau, Laü, Laú, Läü, Láu

2 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Lẫu under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Lẫu mean, and where does it come from?
From Cantonese 劉/刘 (lau4), Hokkien 劉/刘 (Lâu) or Teochew 劉/刘 (lao5). Doublet of Luu. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Lẫu?
In the United States, the national register counted about 30 thousand people named Lẫu, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lau. After it come Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Spain; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Lẫu most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lẫu 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 Lẫu?
In the United States, the national register counted 29,792 people named Lẫu in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
How common is Lẫu compared with other names?
In Hong Kong, Lẫu is the 410th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lẫu?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%E1%BA%ABu

The 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, “Lẫu” — the 410th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Lẫu parses inside a full name →