Miau

surname · Latin script

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

Miau is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In English, recorded as Alternative spelling of meow.

rarermore common
  • ARArgentina1 in 1.5M(measured from records)

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.

Argentina (measured from records)

31 people

Sources
55 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.5M (inferred from the name graph)

Argentina

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Alternative spelling of meow.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Miau is read(measured from records)

Miau is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish25%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Miau in Spanish.

  • English17%

    Alternative spelling of meow.

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

  • Indonesian11%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Miau in Indonesian.

  • French11%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Miau in French.

  • German11%

    meow (cry of a cat)

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

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Miau 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 Miau is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina311 in 1.5M31——
US United States———Miau55
MY Malaysia———Miau17
ES Spain———Miau9
GB United Kingdom———Miau13
SG Singapore———Miau8
BO Bolivia———Miau2
HK Hong Kong———Miau2

31 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)

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

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Miaü

  • Lithuanian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Lithuania

    Also written Miaū

  • Portuguese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Portugal, Spain

    Also written ̶m̶i̶a̶u̶

34 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)

Miau is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Portuguese, meow (onomatopoeia of the cry of a cat)

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

  • In Finnish, meow

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

  • In wuu, Sketch (on thin paper over a copy)

    as a wordA Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect

  • In wuu, Rice

    as a wordAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect

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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 4 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Miau
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—31—

Reference works 1

  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Miau mean, and where does it come from?
Alternative spelling of meow. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Miau have the most bearers?
In Argentina, the national register counted about 31 people named Miau, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Miau most common?
Miau is densest in Argentina, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.5 million people carrying it.
How common is the name Miau?
In Argentina, the national register counted 31 people named Miau, about 1 in 1.5 million residents.

What do you want to know about Miau?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/miau

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Miau”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Miau parses inside a full name →