Lame
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Unable to walk properly because of a problem with one's feet or legs
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/leɪm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lame is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Senegal than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 765K(measured from records)
- ALAlbania≈1 in 4K
- SNSenegal≈1 in 13K
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.
- Senegal (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 189 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Albania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Possibly French L’Ame, a nickname from a variant of I’aime ‘the loved one’, from the past participle of aimer ‘to love’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lame is read(measured from records)
Lame is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English46%
Unable to walk properly because of a problem with one's feet or legs.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French25%
lamina
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lame in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lame 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SN Senegal | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 1 | — | 2 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 225K | — | Lame | 19 |
| AL Albania | ≈780 est. | ≈1 in 4K | 75 | — | — |
| FR France | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 103K | 102 | — | 2 |
| US United States | 435 | 1 in 765K | 689 | Lame | 189 |
| IT Italy | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 211K | listed | Lame | 7 |
| UY Uruguay | 40 | 1 in 85K | 40 | — | 1 |
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; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); the xinhua-italian-manual register; DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024). 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)
Lame is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Possibly French L’Ame, a nickname from a variant of I’aime ‘the loved one’, from the past participle of aimer ‘to love’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In men, tr., to stretch one’s self. [lame angi gbayéi gbi
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Swedish, definite natural masculine singular of lam
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, definite singular of lam
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)
- Quintín Lameb. 1880COColombian indigenous activist (1880-1967)
- Sixtine Lameb. 1972FRFrench politician
- Khaby Lameb. 2000SNSenegalese-Italian social media personality (born 2000)
- Jennifer Lameb. 2000USAmerican film editor
- Elton M.C. Lamebotanist
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 22 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 689 | #35,228 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 548 | #38,035 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 435 | #48,530 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 127 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 102 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 100 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 88 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 87 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 80 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 77 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 75 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 60 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- Where does the name Lame come from?
- Possibly French L’Ame, a nickname from a variant of I’aime ‘the loved one’, from the past participle of aimer ‘to love’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Lame mean?
- In English, Unable to walk properly because of a problem with one's feet or legs.
- How do you pronounce Lame?
- A machine transcription gives /leɪm/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lame have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 thousand people named Lame in Senegal, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Lame?
- In the United States, the national register counted 435 people named Lame in 2010, about 1 in 765 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lame?
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/lameThe 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, “Lame”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.