Lācis

surname · Latin script

Meaning: bear (mammal, especially Ursus arctos)

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 3.1M(measured from records)
  • UGUganda≈1 in 2K
  • LVLatvia≈1 in 4.3K

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.

Uganda (inferred from the name graph)

≈22,000 people, est.

Sources
84 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Uganda, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Lacis in US United States, LV Latvia, AU Australia and 2 more.

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)

bear (mammal, especially Ursus arctos)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lācis 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 Lācis is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
UG Uganda#537≈22,000 est.≈1 in 2K—Lacis3
LV Latvia#372≈440 est.≈1 in 4.3K—Lacis40
US United States—1061 in 3.1M109Lacis84
AU Australia—≈41 est.≈1 in 628K—Lacis33
NO Norway—381 in 144K38—2
SE Sweden—351 in 292K35Lacis4
GA Gabon—≈10 est.≈1 in 217K1——

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 2000; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative). 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)

Lācis is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Lacis

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Lacis, La̅cis

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Lacis

  • Swedish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden

    Also written Lacis

  • Arabic name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Lacis

  • Ukrainian name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Lacis

11 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)

Lācis is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Latvian, Plēsēju kārtas dzimta ("Ursidae"), kurā ietilpst lieli dzīvnieki ar masīvu ķermeni, biezu apmatojumu, īsu kaklu, strupu asti, 6 ģintis, 7 sugas, Latvijā sastopams tikai brūnais lācis, 21. gs. sākumā ~10 īpatņi, 2025. g. - ~150

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Ķekatnieku maska ar kažoku, kas izgriezts ar iekšpusi uz āru

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, šīs dzimtas dzīvnieks (parasti brūnais lācis)

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

1850190019502000Asja Lācis, b. 1891Jūlijs Lācis, b. 1892Vilis Lācis, b. 1904Ēvalds Vilks, b. 1923Dzintars Lācis, b. 1940Ivars Lācis, b. 1949Kārlis Lācis, b. 1977

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)

FormalGodātais Lācis kungs,Dear Mr Lācis, (English)
InformalSveiki Lācis,Hi Lācis, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 5 sources across 2 countries.

Reference works 2

  • 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 Lācis mean, and where does it come from?
bear (mammal, especially Ursus arctos) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Lācis have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 22 thousand people named Lācis in Uganda, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lacis.
How common is the name Lācis?
In the United States, the national register counted 106 people named Lācis in 2010, about 1 in 3.1 million residents.
How common is Lācis compared with other names?
In Uganda, Lācis is the 537th most common surname of 6,307 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lācis?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%C4%81cis

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, “Lācis” — the 537th most common surname in Uganda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lācis parses inside a full name →