Pauw
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A peacock, a fowl of the genus Pavo
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɑu̯/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pauw is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 13K(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 200K
- BEBelgium1 in 558K
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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 125 (measured from records)
- 1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
1,370 people, 2007
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A peacock, a fowl of the genus Pavo.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pauw 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,370 | 1 in 13K | 1.4K | Pauw | 81 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 86K | — | Pauw | 14 |
| FR France | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 200K | listed | Pauw | 125 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 414K | — | Pauw | 47 |
| US United States | — | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 1.9M | listed | Pauw | 62 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 479K | — | Pauw | 18 |
| BE Belgium | #129 | 21 | 1 in 558K | 21 | Pauw | 115 |
1,370 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. 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: Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Pieter Pauwb. 1564NLDutch botanist and anatomist (1564-1617)
- Adriaan Pauwb. 1585NLGrand pensionary of Holland (1585-1653)
- Cornelis Pauwb. 1593Dutch diplomat (1593-1668)
- Plopatoub. 1938NLnot in their usual nameDutch writer (1938-2017)
- Jacques Pauwb. 1950ZASouth African journalist & author
- Leonoor Pauwb. 1956NLDutch actor (1956–2013)
- Jeroen Pauwb. 1960NLDutch television reporter, presenter, and producer
- Vera Pauwb. 1963NLDutch association footballer and coach
- Robert de Pauwb. 1981Dutch association football coach
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 17 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.4K | #1,124 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 21 | #45,844 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Pauw mean, and where does it come from?
- A peacock, a fowl of the genus Pavo. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Pauw?
- A machine transcription gives /pɑu̯/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- In which country does Pauw have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Pauw, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pauw.
- Where is Pauw most common?
- Pauw is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 13 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Pauw?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,370 people named Pauw in 2007, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
- How common is Pauw compared with other names?
- In Belgium, Pauw is the 129th most common surname of 246,397 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pauw?
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/pauwThe 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, “Pauw” — the 129th most common surname in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.