Lewis

surname · Latin script

Meaning: From Lowis, a Norman name of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-war'; also from Llewellyn, Mac Lughaidh, Lewis Island, or similar Jewish names

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/luːɪs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Lewis is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • ECEcuador1 in 31as Luis(measured from records)
  • PEPeru≈1 in 57as Luis
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 61as Luis

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lewis itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (measured from records)

1,335,098 named Luiz, 2022

#35 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

8 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
632 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 31 (inferred from the name graph)

Ecuador, as Luis

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

LuisLatin(measured from records)
לואיסHebrew(measured from records)
ลอยThai(measured from records)
ΛουηςGreek(measured from records)
라이스Hangul(measured from records)
ლუისGeorgian(measured from records)
ԼուիArmenian(measured from records)
ЛуивиCyrillic(measured from records)

6 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Luis in PE Peru, BR Brazil, CO Colombia and 2 more, Louis in US United States and Lüïs in GT Guatemala.

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 Lowis, a Norman name of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-war'; also from Llewellyn, Mac Lughaidh, Lewis Island, or similar Jewish names.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lewis 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 Lewis is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#151,335,098as Luiz1 in 1591.3MLuis267
CO Colombia#6≈660,000 est.≈1 in 75594Luis246
PE Peru#3≈560,000 est.≈1 in 57557KLuis190
EC Ecuador#2539,474as Luis1 in 31539KLuis157
US United States#101489,968as Luis1 in 679532KLouis632
GT Guatemala—≈210,000 est.≈1 in 83494KLüïs152
CR Costa Rica#183,998as Luis1 in 6184KLuis173

1,335,098 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022, counting the spelling luiz. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENIEC — DNI population names; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; RENAP — annual births; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)

Lewis is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Lew-Is

  • French surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Léwis, Lēwīs, Lèwis, Lëwis, Lëwîs

98 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)

Lewis 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, from Old Frankish Hlúdwig ‘loud battle’, via French Louis; first attested Lowis le Briton 1166 RBE (Ess)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, English form of Louis; used in Ireland to anglicise Laoiseach and Lughaidh.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Lughaidh ‘son of Lughaidh'. This is one of the most common Old Irish personal names. It is derived from Lugh ‘brightness’, which was the name of a Celtic god.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Common English form, since the Middle Ages, of the French name pLouis. In modern use it is also in part a transferred use of the surname derived from this given name. Pet form: Lewie.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • 2. Welsh: from an Anglicized form of the personal name Llywelyn (see Llewellyn).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

1850190019502000Gilbert Newton Lewis, b. 1875Sinclair Lewis, b. 1885C. S. Lewis, b. 1898Arthur Lewis, b. 1915Jerry Lee Lewis, b. 1935Carl Lewis, b. 1961Juliette Lewis, b. 1973Cassandra Clare, b. 1973Leona Lewis, b. 1985Matthew Lewis, b. 1989

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)

FormalDear Mr Lewis,
InformalHi Lewis,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 123 sources across 58 countries.

Official registers attesting Lewis
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010532K#29
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020515K#30
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000510K#26
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—1K#457

Reference works 10

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 Lewis mean, and where does it come from?
From Lowis, a Norman name of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-war'; also from Llewellyn, Mac Lughaidh, Lewis Island, or similar Jewish names. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Lewis?
In the etymology graph, Lowe, Ludwig and Vico are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Lewis have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.3 million people named Luiz, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Lewis most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Lewis itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Ecuador's: the national register counts about 1 in 31 people named Luis.
How do you pronounce Lewis?
A machine transcription gives /luːɪs/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Lewis?
In Brazil, the national register counted 1,335,098 people named Luiz in 2022, about 1 in 159 residents.
How common is Lewis compared with other names?
In Brazil, Lewis is the 15th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lewis?

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

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, “Lewis” — the 15th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lewis parses inside a full name →