Mew
surname · Latin script
Meaning: OE mēaw ‘a gull, a sea-mew’, also used as a personal name; first attested Algarus filius Meawes 1016 OEByn
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mju/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mew is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 122K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 668K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 134K
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.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 191 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 122K (inferred from the name graph)
≈740 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
OE mēaw ‘a gull, a sea-mew’, also used as a personal name; first attested Algarus filius Meawes 1016 OEByn
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mew 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | ≈740 est. | ≈1 in 1.8M | 12 | Mew | 26 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 122K | — | Mew | 110 |
| US United States | 498 | 1 in 668K | 507 | Mew | 191 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 166K | — | Mew | 21 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 152K | — | Mew | 15 |
| AU Australia | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 134K | — | Mew | 65 |
| SG Singapore | ≈44 est. | ≈1 in 141K | — | Mew | 12 |
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; the in-instate-surnames-bystate register. 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)
Mew 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, 1. from an Old English nickname m^w, meaw ‘seagull’, or the same word used as a personal name, Meawa. Compare Maw. 2. metonymic occupational name for someone in charge of a mew, a cage for hawks and falcons, especially while moulting, from Old French mue, a derivative of muer ‘to moult’ (from Latin mutare ‘to change’).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A gull, seagull.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, alternative form of mewe (“cage”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-3 language code for Maaka.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Kurdish, grape tree
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)
- James Mewb. 1837GBEnglish barrister (1837–1913)
- John Mewb. 1928GBBritish orthodontist, the creator of "orthotropics" and mewing (1928–2025)
- Chris Mewb. 1961Australian rules footballer
- Darren Stylesb. 1975GBnot in their usual nameBritish musician
- Darren Mewb. 1979GBBritish swimmer
- Scarlett Mew Jensenb. 2001GBBritish diver
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)
Attested in 12 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 507 | #45,457 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 498 | #43,369 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 496 | #41,382 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 12 | #2,441 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #18,678 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 4 | #31,618 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3 | #2,708 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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 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 Mew mean, and where does it come from?
- OE mēaw ‘a gull, a sea-mew’, also used as a personal name; first attested Algarus filius Meawes 1016 OEByn Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Mew?
- A machine transcription gives /mju/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Mew have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 736 people named Mew in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mew.
- How common is the name Mew?
- In the United States, the national register counted 498 people named Mew in 2010, about 1 in 668 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Mew?
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/mewThe 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, “Mew”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.