Liaw
surname · Latin script
Meaning: possibly a variant of Liao
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ʎɪɔ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Liaw is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 637K(measured from records)
- CRCosta Rica1 in 2.5M
- PLPoland1 in 19M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 214 (measured from records)
- 1 in 637K (inferred from the name graph)
522 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)possibly a variant of Liao.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Liaw 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 | 522 | 1 in 637K | 594 | Liaw | 214 |
| CR Costa Rica | 2 | 1 in 2.5M | 2 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 2 | 1 in 19M | 2 | — | — |
| MY Malaysia | — | — | — | Liaw | 69 |
| AU Australia | — | — | — | Liaw | 65 |
| SG Singapore | — | — | — | Liaw | 64 |
522 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; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)Liaw is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In bsb, neck
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)- Adam Liawb. 1978AUAustralian chef and lawyer
- Hungjiun LiawUSresearcher
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)10 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 594 | #39,885 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 522 | #41,657 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 422 | #47,308 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #354,054 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 2 | #16,892 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Liaw mean, and where does it come from?
- possibly a variant of Liao. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Liaw?
- A machine transcription gives /ʎɪɔ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Liaw have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 522 people named Liaw, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled liaw.
- Where is Liaw most common?
- Liaw is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 637 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Liaw?
- In the United States, the national register counted 522 people named Liaw in 2010, about 1 in 637 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Liaw?
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/liawThe 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, “Liaw”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.