Lewis
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lewis is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From Lowis, a Norman name of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-war'; also from Llewellyn, Mac Lughaidh, Lewis Island, or similar Jewish names.
- ECEcuador1 in 31as Luis(measured from records)
- PEPeru≈1 in 57as Luis
- CRCosta Rica1 in 61as Luis
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 Lewis itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #35 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 632 (measured from records)
- 1 in 31 (inferred from the name graph)
1,335,098 named Luiz, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador, as Luis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Luis in PE Peru, BR Brazil, CO Colombia and 2 more, Louis in US United States and Lüïs in GT Guatemala.
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 Lowis, a Norman name of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-war'; also from Llewellyn, Mac Lughaidh, Lewis Island, or similar Jewish names.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lewis 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #15 | 1,335,098as Luiz | 1 in 159 | 1.3M | Luis | 267 |
| CO Colombia | #6 | ≈660,000 est. | ≈1 in 75 | 594 | Luis | 246 |
| PE Peru | #3 | ≈560,000 est. | ≈1 in 57 | 557K | Luis | 190 |
| EC Ecuador | #2 | 539,474as Luis | 1 in 31 | 539K | Luis | 157 |
| US United States | #101 | 489,968as Luis | 1 in 679 | 532K | Louis | 632 |
| GT Guatemala | — | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 83 | 494K | Lüïs | 152 |
| CR Costa Rica | #1 | 83,998as Luis | 1 in 61 | 84K | Luis | 173 |
1,335,098 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022, counting the spelling luiz. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENIEC — DNI population names; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; RENAP — annual births; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Lewis 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 English, from Old Frankish Hlúdwig ‘loud battle’, via French Louis; first attested Lowis le Briton 1166 RBE (Ess)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, English form of Louis; used in Ireland to anglicise Laoiseach and Lughaidh.
as a nameIrish first names
reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Lughaidh ‘son of Lughaidh'. This is one of the most common Old Irish personal names. It is derived from Lugh ‘brightness’, which was the name of a Celtic god.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Common English form, since the Middle Ages, of the French name pLouis. In modern use it is also in part a transferred use of the surname derived from this given name. Pet form: Lewie.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
2. Welsh: from an Anglicized form of the personal name Llywelyn (see Llewellyn).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Gilbert Newton Lewisb. 1875USAmerican physical chemist
- Sinclair Lewisb. 1885USAmerican writer and playwright (1885–1951)
- C. S. Lewisb. 1898GBBritish writer, lay theologian, and scholar (1898–1963)
- Arthur Lewisb. 1915LCSaint Lucian economist (1915–1991)
- Jerry Lee Lewisb. 1935USAmerican rock 'n' roll musician (1935–2022)
- Carl Lewisb. 1961USUS track & field athlete
- Juliette Lewisb. 1973USAmerican actress and singer
- Cassandra Clareb. 1973IRnot in their usual nameAmerican author
- Leona Lewisb. 1985GBBritish singer (born 1985)
- Matthew Lewisb. 1989GBEnglish actor (born 1989)
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 123 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 532K | #29 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 515K | #30 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 510K | #26 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 63K | #780 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1K | #457 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 736 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 317 | #780 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 198 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 195 | #25,581 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 46 | — |
Reference works 10
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Lewis mean, and where does it come from?
- From Lowis, a Norman name of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-war'; also from Llewellyn, Mac Lughaidh, Lewis Island, or similar Jewish names. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Lewis?
- In the etymology graph, Lowe, Ludwig and Vico are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Lewis have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.3 million people named Luiz, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Lewis most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Lewis itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Ecuador's: the national register counts about 1 in 31 people named Luis.
- How common is the name Lewis?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,335,098 people named Luiz in 2022, about 1 in 159 residents.
- How common is Lewis compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Lewis is the 15th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lewis?
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/lewisThe 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, “Lewis” — the 15th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.