Lair
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lair is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Possibly an Americanized spelling of German Lehr or Lohr (see Loehr).
- USUnited States1 in 85K(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 17K
- PTPortugal≈1 in 71K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 84 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Possibly an Americanized spelling of German Lehr or Lohr (see Loehr).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lair 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 563 | — | 2 |
| US United States | 3,923 | 1 in 85K | 3.9K | Lair | 61 |
| CA Canada | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Lair | 7 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 137K | — | Lair | 4 |
| BR Brazil | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 772K | 8K | Lair | 84 |
| PT Portugal | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 71K | listed | Lair | 4 |
| GT Guatemala | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 121K | — | Lair | 2 |
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: IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Lair is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A place inhabited by a wild animal, often a cave or a hole in the ground.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sco, lore
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)
- Pierre-Aimé Lairb. 1769FRFrench official from the 19th century
- Édouard Lair de Beauvaisb. 1790FRFrench architect
- Alfred Lair de Beauvaisb. 1820FRFrench journalist, organist and composer
- Elizabeth Martineau des Chesnezb. 1829FRnot in their usual nameFrench author
- Jules Lairb. 1836FRFrench business owner
- John Lee Jones Lairb. 1894USAmerican songwriter
- Mike Lairb. 1946USAmerican politician
- Sylvaine Lairb. 1979FRFrench association football player
- Caroline Lairb. 1985FRFrench entrepreneur
- Nicole LairFRPh.D. Université Blaise Pascal 1975
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 26 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.9K | #8,425 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.7K | #8,171 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.7K | #8,531 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 725 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 722 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 667 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 637 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 616 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 563 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 514 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 489 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 448 | #18,795 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Lair mean, and where does it come from?
- Possibly an Americanized spelling of German Lehr or Lohr (see Loehr). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Lair?
- In the etymology graph, Lager is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Lair have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.0 thousand people named Lair in France, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Lair?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,923 people named Lair in 2010, about 1 in 85 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lair?
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/lairThe 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, “Lair”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.