Lawes
surname · Latin script
Meaning: son of Law (ii)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lawes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 47K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 63K
- USUnited States1 in 470K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 224 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
son of Law (ii)
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lawes 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Lawes | 164 |
| US United States | 708 | 1 in 470K | 829 | Lawes | 224 |
| AU Australia | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Lawes | 88 |
| CA Canada | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 220K | — | Lawes | 63 |
| MA Morocco | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 236K | — | Lawes | 4 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Lawes | 14 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈28 est. | ≈1 in 177K | — | Lawes | 27 |
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. 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)
Lawes 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.
patronymic from Law 1.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Welsh, soft mutation of llawes
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)
- Henry Lawesb. 1595GBEnglish musician and composer
- William Lawesb. 1602GBEnglish composer and musician
- Nicholas Lawesb. 1652JMGovernor of Jamaica
- John Bennet Lawesb. 1814GBBritish scientist who invented synthetic fertilizer (1814-1900)
- Lewis Edward Lawesb. 1883USAmerican prison reformer (1883-1947)
- Henry Lawesb. 1948JMJamaican record producer
- Andrea Lawesb. 1962CACanadian female curler
- Kaitlyn Lawesb. 1988CACanadian curler
- Courtney Lawesb. 1989GBEnglish rugby union footballer
- Connor Lawesb. 1996Canadian curler
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 13 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 829 | #30,224 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 708 | #32,485 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 611 | #34,949 |
| 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 Lawes mean, and where does it come from?
- son of Law (ii) Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Lawes have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 thousand people named Lawes in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lawes.
- How common is the name Lawes?
- In the United States, the national register counted 708 people named Lawes in 2010, about 1 in 470 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lawes?
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/lawesThe 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, “Lawes”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.