Powe
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Powe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: meaning ‘leader’ or ‘headman’, e.g.
- USUnited States1 in 79K(measured from records)
- PKPakistan≈1 in 37K
- CNChina≈1 in 44K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 289 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 37K (inferred from the name graph)
≈31,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Pakistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
meaning ‘leader’ or ‘headman’, e.g. Mayer and Schultz; Welsh: patr., with a reduced form of the W element ap, it is a deriv. of L praetor, the title of various officials in from the given name Howe, a var. of Hugh. republican and imperial Rome (probably a contracted form of praeitor, from praeire to go before). Var.: Pow (chiefly Scots.). Var.: Pretorius. Poweleit see Paul
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Where in the world(measured from records)
Powe 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Powe | 1 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Powe | 1 |
| US United States | 4,233 | 1 in 79K | 4.2K | Powe | 289 |
| EG Egypt | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 91K | — | Powe | 2 |
| IN India | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 1.8M | 7 | Powe | 11 |
| CU Cuba | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Powe | 1 |
| IE Ireland | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 70K | — | Powe | 7 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈45 est. | ≈1 in 62K | — | Powe | 5 |
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; 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)
Powe 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 men, Flower. It is not used quite in the English sense of flowers :is apart from the plant
as a wordMende Natural History Vocabulary
In fro, alternative form of poe (“paw; claw”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Yoruba, to tell a proverb
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)
- Lucas A. Powe, Jr.b. 1943USAmerican lawyer
- B. W. Poweb. 1955CACanadian writer (born 1955)
- Karl Poweb. 1962USAmerican-football player (1962-)
- Keith Poweb. 1969USAmerican football defensive end
- Leon Poweb. 1984USAmerican basketball player
- Darroll Poweb. 1985CACanadian ice hockey player
- Jerrell Poweb. 1987USAmerican football defensive lineman
- Darius Poweb. 1994USAmerican football player (born 1994)
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 10 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.2K | #7,821 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.1K | #7,773 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.9K | #7,844 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #22,227 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 5 | #4,195 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- Where does the name Powe come from?
- meaning ‘leader’ or ‘headman’, e.g. Mayer and Schultz; Welsh: patr., with a reduced form of the W element ap, it is a deriv. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- What does the name Powe mean?
- Recorded meaning: meaning ‘leader’ or ‘headman’, e.g.
- In which country does Powe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 31 thousand people named Powe in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled powe.
- How common is the name Powe?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,233 people named Powe in 2010, about 1 in 79 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Powe?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/poweThe 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, “Powe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.