Cau
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Cau is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in France. Recorded meaning: variante regional de Cao.
- FRFrance
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 216 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
variante regional de Cao
Sources 1
- Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cau counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | — | 165 | Cau | 216 |
| US United States | — | 394 | — | 25 |
| AR Argentina | — | 172 | — | — |
| ES Spain | — | 157 | — | 9 |
| BR Brazil | — | 92 | — | — |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Cau is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In cdo, to pierce, to join, as board with bamboo pins
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In fj, to make presents, present property, answer a petition; present food to a chief; make a contribution to a common effort
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-5 language code for Caucasian languages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In fj, kind of ironwood tree: Casuarina nodiflora
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Chinese, to caution (especially in a legal process)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Qin Shi Huangb. 259CNnot in their usual namefirst emperor of Qin Dynasty
- Emperor Taizu of Songb. 927CNnot in their usual namefounding emperor of the Song Dynasty (reigned 960-976)
- Emperor Duanzong of Songb. 1268CNnot in their usual nameemperor of the Song Dynasty
- Zhao Ziyangb. 1919CNnot in their usual nameformer General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
- Elaine Chaob. 1953TWnot in their usual name18th United States Secretary of Transportation and 24th United States Secretary of Labor
- Judy Chub. 1953USnot in their usual nameU.S. Representative from California
- Rosalind Chaob. 1957USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Winston Chaob. 1960TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actor (born 1960)
- Zhao Weib. 1976CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress, singer and filmmaker (born 1976)
- Chloé Zhaob. 1982CNnot in their usual nameChinese filmmaker (born 1982)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 33 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 900 | #10,212 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 394 | #22,077 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 266 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 263 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 263 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 231 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 220 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 209 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 184 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 177 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 172 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 172 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Cau mean, and where does it come from?
- variante regional de Cao Recorded by Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos.
- In which country does Cau have the most bearers?
- Cau is most frequently recorded in France, where it is most often spelled cau.
What do you want to know about Cau?
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/cauThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Cau”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.