Sâw

given name · Latin script

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

Sâw is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. In Myanmar (Burma) it is the 73rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: The noun from Middle English sawe, sawgh, from Old English saga, sagu (“saw”), from Proto-West Germanic *sagu, from Proto-Germanic *sagô, *sagō (“saw”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”).

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 926K(measured from records)
  • FIFinland1 in 119K
  • NONorway1 in 119K

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.

India (measured from records)

1,432 people

Sources
138 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 119K (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

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 Saw in MM Myanmar (Burma), US United States, IN India.

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)

Derivation of Sâw: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Sâw
  1. Middle Englishsawe(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishsaga“saw”(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*sagu(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*sagô“saw”(measured from records)
  5. Proto-Indo-European*sek-“to cut”(measured from records)
  6. Middle Englishsawen(measured from records)

The noun from Middle English sawe, sawgh, from Old English saga, sagu (“saw”), from Proto-West Germanic *sagu, from Proto-Germanic *sagô, *sagō (“saw”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”). Cognate with West Frisian seage (“saw”), Dutch zaag (“saw”), German Säge (“saw”), Danish sav (“saw”), Swedish såg (“saw”), Icelandic sög (“saw”), and through Indo-European, with Latin secō (“cut”) and Italian sega (“saw”). The verb from Middle English sawen, from the noun above.

Sources 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary
  • Dictionar Onomastic Rominesc

Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Sâw 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 Sâw is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—1,4321 in 926K1.4KSaw24
US United States—6911 in 481K1.9KSaw138
FI Finland—471 in 119K81—2
NO Norway—461 in 119K62—10
ES Spain—201 in 2.5M20—4
DK Denmark—81 in 734K31——
GY Guyana—21 in 375K2——
MM Myanmar (Burma)#73——listedSaw94

1,432 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)

Sâw is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Malaysia, United States, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Saw, Sàw, Şaw, Ŝaẁ, Săw

  • Malay surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Singapore

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Saw, Šäw, Şäŵ, Śåw, Säw

2 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Sâw under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Sâw mean, and where does it come from?
The noun from Middle English sawe, sawgh, from Old English saga, sagu (“saw”), from Proto-West Germanic *sagu, from Proto-Germanic *sagô, *sagō (“saw”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
Is Sâw a male or female name?
Sâw is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
In which country does Sâw have the most bearers?
In India, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Sâw, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled saw.
Where is Sâw most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Sâw is densest in Finland — about 1 in 119 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Sâw?
In India, the national register counted 1,432 people named Sâw, about 1 in 926 thousand residents.
How common is Sâw compared with other names?
In Myanmar (Burma), Sâw is the 73rd most common surname of 12,945 surnames recorded there.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/s%C3%A2w

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, “Sâw” — the 73rd most common surname in Myanmar (Burma). Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sâw parses inside a full name →