Lou
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Diminutive of Louis or Louise, from Germanic Hludwig, 'famous battle'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lou is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 5.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 8.2K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 13K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 486 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈260,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Côte d’Ivoire, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Lóū in DZ Algeria.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Diminutive of Louis or Louise, from Germanic Hludwig, 'famous battle'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lou 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Lou | 70 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 935 | — | 1 |
| FR France | — | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 53K | — | 11 |
| US United States | #497 | 16,909 | 1 in 20K | 11K | Lou | 486 |
| PH Philippines | #445 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Lou | 131 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈7,200 est. | ≈1 in 6K | — | Lóū | 10 |
| SE Sweden | — | 2,088 | 1 in 4.9K | 2.1K | — | 25 |
| IE Ireland | #246 | ≈630 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | — | Lou | 42 |
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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies. 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)
Lou 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 French, Short form of Louis/Louise; Germanic « glorious fighter ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
,2 Short form of Louis or, less commonly, Louise.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In French, Diminutif de Louise; forme moderne de Louise, d’origine germanique.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Diminutif moderne de Louise/Louis; origine germanique.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
English: short form of LOUIS or, less commonly, LOUISE .
as a word
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)
- Lou Andreas-Salomeb. 1861RUGerman-Russian essayist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst (1861–1937)
- Lou Hooverb. 1874USFirst Lady of the United States from 1929 to 1933
- Lou Costellob. 1906USAmerican actor and comedian (1906–1959)
- Betty Lou Gersonb. 1914USAmerican actress (1914-1999)
- Lou Antoniob. 1934USAmerican actor (b. 1934)
- Lou Castelb. 1943ITSwedish actor
- Marcia Lucasb. 1945USnot in their usual nameAmerican film editor (1945–2026)
- Lou Ferrignob. 1951USAmerican actor and bodybuilder
- Melissa Etheridgeb. 1961USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer-songwriter
- Amy Adamsb. 1974ITnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1974)
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 87 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 53K | #11 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 11K | #1,775 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6K | #1,775 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 4.1K | #263 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 2.1K | #1,027 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 474 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 81 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 65 | — |
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)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- Is Lou a male or female name?
- Lou is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Lou mean, and where does it come from?
- Diminutive of Louis or Louise, from Germanic Hludwig, 'famous battle'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- In which country does Lou have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 259 thousand people named Lou in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lou.
- What are other forms of the name Lou?
- In the etymology graph, Gina, Louie and Gino are forms of the same name in other languages; Luella and Louella are recorded short or pet forms.
- How common is the name Lou?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,909 people named Lou in 2020, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
- How common is Lou compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Lou is the 246th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lou?
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/louThe 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, “Lou” — the 246th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.