Lawson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymic from Laurence via the short form Law
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lawson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.3K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.4K
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)
- #769 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 536 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
119,053 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Patronymic from Laurence via the short form Law. Recorded from at least 1370; prominent in Edinburgh in the 15th–17th centuries.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lawson 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #229 | 119,053 | 1 in 2.8K | 119K | Lawson | 536 |
| GB United Kingdom | #186 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 6 | Lawson | 297 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | — | Lawson | 66 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.9K | — | Lawson | 20 |
| CA Canada | #260 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | 6 | Lawson | 235 |
| AU Australia | #222 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 10 | Lawson | 218 |
| IE Ireland | #227 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Lawson | 59 |
| NZ New Zealand | #194 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Lawson | 123 |
119,053 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Lawson 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 English, son of Law (Laurence); first attested Richard Lawisson 1327 SRC
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Old English; from laurel tree, crowned with laurels
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
‘Law’ is not a forename in its own right, but a shortened form of Laurence. Lawsons are recorded from at least 1370, when Richard Lawson was a canon of St Giles, Edinburgh; and it was a prominent name in Edinburgh in the 15th to 17th centuries.
as a nameScottish Surnames
2. Americanized form of Swedish Larsson.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, An English and Scottish surname originating as a patronymic.
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 Lawsonb. 1867AUAustralian writer and poet (1867–1922)
- John Howard Lawsonb. 1894USAmerican dramatist (1894–1977)
- Bernard Foxb. 1927GBnot in their usual nameBritish actor (1927–2016)
- Nigel Lawsonb. 1932GBBritish peer and politician (1932–2023)
- Twiggyb. 1949GBnot in their usual nameBritish model, actress and singer
- Nigella Lawsonb. 1960GBEnglish food writer and television cook (born 1960)
- Bianca Lawsonb. 1979USAmerican actress
- Maggie Lawsonb. 1980USAmerican actress
- Josh Lawsonb. 1981AUAustralian actor
- Jayme Lawsonb. 1997USAmerican actress
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 68 sources across 36 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 119K | #256 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 115K | #235 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 115K | #267 |
Reference works 7
- 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
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Lawson come from?
- Patronymic from Laurence via the short form Law. Recorded from at least 1370; prominent in Edinburgh in the 15th–17th centuries. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- What does the name Lawson mean?
- Recorded meaning: Patronymic from Laurence via the short form Law.
- In which country does Lawson have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 119 thousand people named Lawson, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lawson.
- How common is the name Lawson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 119,053 people named Lawson in 2010, about 1 in 2.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Lawson compared with other names?
- In the United States, Lawson is the 229th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lawson?
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/lawsonThe 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, “Lawson” — the 229th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.