Ráu
surname · Latin script
Ráu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From the eye dialect spelling of dragu (“monster”), from Latin dracō, from Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn).
- DEGermany≈1 in 4.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 31K
- USUnited States1 in 37K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 350 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Rau in US United States, DE Germany, GB United Kingdom and 3 more.
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)
- Latindracō(measured from records)
- Ancient Greekδράκωνdrákōn(measured from records)
From the eye dialect spelling of dragu (“monster”), from Latin dracō, from Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn).
Sources 5
- Dizionario dei cognomi italiani
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Dictionar Onomastic Rominesc
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ráu 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #282 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | listed | Rau | 187 |
| US United States | — | 8,961 | 1 in 37K | 9K | Rau | 350 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Rau | 88 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 55K | 119 | Rau | 68 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,122 | 1 in 41K | 1.1K | — | 1 |
| LA Laos | — | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Rau | 4 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 414 | 1 in 20K | 414 | Rau | 38 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 300 | 1 in 11K | 300 | — | — |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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 Ráu mean, and where does it come from?
- From the eye dialect spelling of dragu (“monster”), from Latin dracō, from Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn). Recorded by Dizionario dei cognomi italiani and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Ráu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Ráu in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rau.
- How common is the name Ráu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,961 people named Ráu in 2010, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
- How common is Ráu compared with other names?
- In Germany, Ráu is the 282nd most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ráu?
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/r%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, “Ráu” — the 282nd most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.