Lupu

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from Romanian lupu ‘wolf’, a translation of the personal name Wolf

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Lupu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • RORomania≈1 in 893(inferred from the name graph)
  • ESSpain1 in 32K
  • UAUkraine≈1 in 41Kas Лупу

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 Lupu 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.

Romania (inferred from the name graph)

≈24,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
139 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 893 (inferred from the name graph)

Romania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

LupuLatin(measured from records)
ЛупуCyrillic(measured from records)

Locally spelled Лупу in UA Ukraine.

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 Romanian lupu ‘wolf’, a translation of the personal name Wolf.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lupu 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 Lupu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RO Romania#242≈24,000 est.≈1 in 893—Lupu43
IT Italy—≈4,000 est.≈1 in 16K—Lupu23
ES Spain—1,5731 in 32K1.6KLupu46
MD Moldova#193≈1,400 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Lupu10
UA Ukraine—≈1,100 est.≈1 in 41K—Лупу16
DK Denmark—1711 in 34K171—1

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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)

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

  • Romanian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Romania, United States, Italy, Spain

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Romania, United States

    Also written Lupú

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Lupú

38 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)

Lupu 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 Romanian, nickname from lupu ‘wolf’, from Latin lupus.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Maltese, wolf

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Czech, genitive/dative/locative singular of lup

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ett, romanization of 𐌋𐌖𐌐𐌖

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Corsican, wolf (Canis lupus)

    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)

150016001700180019002000Vasile Lupu, b. 1595Ruxandra Lupu, b. 1630Ștefăniță Lupu, b. 1641Nicolae L. Lupu, b. 1876Nicolae Gheorghe Lupu, b. 1884Nicolae Lupu, b. 1921Radu Lupu, b. 1945Marian Lupu, b. 1966Dănuț Lupu, b. 1967

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 30 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Lupu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—1.6K#2,973
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—1.6K#2,973
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—171#3,040

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 Lupu mean, and where does it come from?
from Romanian lupu ‘wolf’, a translation of the personal name Wolf. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Lupu have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 24 thousand people named Lupu in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lupu.
How common is the name Lupu?
In Spain, the national register counted 1,573 people named Lupu, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
How common is Lupu compared with other names?
In Romania, Lupu is the 242nd most common surname of 78,699 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lupu?

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

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, “Lupu” — the 242nd most common surname in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lupu parses inside a full name →