Jow
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Alternative form of jhow (“kind of tamarisk”)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/d͡ʒaʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jow is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Madagascar than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 802K(measured from records)
- MGMadagascar≈1 in 367
- SGSingapore≈1 in 273K
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.
- Madagascar (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 177 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 367 (inferred from the name graph)
≈73,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Madagascar, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Alternative form of jhow (“kind of tamarisk”).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jow 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MG Madagascar | #191 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 367 | — | Jow | 1 |
| US United States | — | 415 | 1 in 802K | 415 | Jow | 177 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 592K | — | Jow | 56 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 607K | — | Jow | 7 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈80 est. | ≈1 in 472K | — | Jow | 30 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 273K | — | Jow | 16 |
| SE Sweden | — | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 476K | — | Jow | 11 |
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. 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)
Jow 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 Chinese, variant of Zhou.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
ISO 639-3 language code for Jowulu.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sco, To ring or toll (a bell).
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)
- Malese Jowb. 1991USAmerican actress, singer, songwriter and model
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 11 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 415 | #50,362 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 413 | #53,969 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 393 | #50,055 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Jow mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative form of jhow (“kind of tamarisk”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Jow?
- A machine transcription gives /d͡ʒaʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Jow have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 73 thousand people named Jow in Madagascar, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jow.
- How common is the name Jow?
- In the United States, the national register counted 415 people named Jow in 2010, about 1 in 802 thousand residents.
- How common is Jow compared with other names?
- In Madagascar, Jow is the 191st most common surname of 2,939 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jow?
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/jowThe 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, “Jow” — the 191st most common surname in Madagascar. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.