Lä

surname · Latin script

Lä is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Algeria it is the 15th most common surname. Recorded meaning: (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.).

  • TNTunisia≈1 in 3.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • DZAlgeria≈1 in 4.9K
  • CACanada≈1 in 6.8K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lä itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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.

Brazil (measured from records)

11,408 people

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
497 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Tunisia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)
LäLatin(measured from records)
ЛаCyrillic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled La in US United States, CA Canada, TN Tunisia 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)

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Cited for this meaning 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
  • Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Dictionary (Section 1)

Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Lä is found

(measured from records)

Lä 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 Lä is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil—11,4081 in 19K11KLa109
DZ Algeria#15≈9,600 est.≈1 in 4.9K—La19
US United States—6,6551 in 50K8KLa497
CA Canada—≈6,100 est.≈1 in 6.8K1La212
EC Ecuador—4,741as Laz1 in 3.6K4.7KLä76
MA Morocco—≈4,600 est.≈1 in 8.2K—La30
TN Tunisia#858≈3,600 est.≈1 in 3.4K—La16

11,408 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INEC — civil registry names. 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)

Lä is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname30 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Canada, Réunion, Senegal

    Also written La, Là, L'A, Lã, L-A

  • a separate surname55 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Mexico, France, Argentina

    Also written La, Lă, Lã, Là, Lâ

  • Thai given name83 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written ละเอียด, ละออ, ลออ, Laaiad, 'ละเอียด

  • Finnish name21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Estonia

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written La, Lå, Lā, Lâ, Lã

22 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.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Lä is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, lee (the state of not being windy due to something blocking the wind), (as a more common translation) shelter

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In vo, at, with (expressing affiliation with a group)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, Sixth tone of the diatonic scale.

    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.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Lä 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 Lä mean, and where does it come from?
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.) Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples) and 5 other sources.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Lä?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Lä, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled la. After it come Algeria, United States, Canada and Ecuador; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Lä?
In Brazil, the national register counted 11,408 people named Lä, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
How common is Lä compared with other names?
In Algeria, Lä is the 15th most common surname of 89,473 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lä?

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

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%C3%A4

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, “Lä” — the 15th most common surname in Algeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Lä parses inside a full name →