Laven

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from a derivative of a Germanic personal name such as Lavoldus or from a derivative of a vernacular form of the Latin personal name Laurentius (see Lawrence)

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Laven is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 608K(measured from records)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 42K
  • SESweden≈1 in 102K

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.

United States (measured from records)

547 people, 2010

Sources
178 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 42K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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 a derivative of a Germanic personal name such as Lavoldus or from a derivative of a vernacular form of the Latin personal name Laurentius (see Lawrence).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Laven 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 Laven is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States5471 in 608K611Laven178
NL Netherlands4141 in 42K414Laven24
NG Nigeria≈270 est.≈1 in 800K—Laven7
DE Germany≈250 est.≈1 in 325K—Laven44
GB United Kingdom≈180 est.≈1 in 366K—Laven70
CA Canada≈120 est.≈1 in 311K—Laven43
SE Sweden≈100 est.≈1 in 102K17Laven21
FI Finland371 in 151K37—2

547 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)

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

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Netherlands

    Also written L'Aven, Lavén, Lavèn, Lavën

  • Spanish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia

    Also written Lavén

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Laṿen, Lavén, Lavën, Lavèn

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India

    Also written Lavén

37 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)

Laven 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 dum, to freshen, refresh, give food or drink as a refresher (to someone who is exhausted)

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

  • In enm, To clean with water; to wash or bath.

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

  • In Norwegian Bokmål, definite masculine singular of lav

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

  • In Danish, definite singular of lav

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

  • In Dutch, to quench one's thirst

    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)

18001850190019502000Abraham Wilhelm Lavén, b. 1812Albin Lavén, b. 1861Ludwig Laven, b. 1881Hannes Laven, b. 1913Arnold Laven, b. 1922Stig Lavén, b. 1923Lea Laven, b. 1948Rolf Laven, b. 1966Mary Laven, b. 1969

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 20 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Laven
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020611#38,939
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000591#35,916
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010547#40,082
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007414#4,839
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—37#29,489
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—9#42,002
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • 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
  • 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 Laven mean, and where does it come from?
from a derivative of a Germanic personal name such as Lavoldus or from a derivative of a vernacular form of the Latin personal name Laurentius (see Lawrence). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Laven have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 547 people named Laven, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled laven.
Where is Laven most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Laven is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 42 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Laven?
In the United States, the national register counted 547 people named Laven in 2010, about 1 in 608 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Laven?

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

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Laven”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Laven parses inside a full name →