Towe

surname · Latin script

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

/ˈtoʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Towe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Warwicks, Leics, and. see Tough .

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 116K(measured from records)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 136K
  • CNChina≈1 in 66K

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)

≈21,000 people, est.

Sources
261 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 66K (inferred from the name graph)

China, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

Main GB Location (1881): Warwicks, Leics, and. see Tough .

Sources 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nordic Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Towe 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 Towe is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈21,000 est.≈1 in 66K—Towe2
US United States2,8771 in 116K2.9KTowe261
GB United Kingdom≈480 est.≈1 in 136K266Towe84
IT Italy≈460 est.≈1 in 136K—Towe4
NG Nigeria≈370 est.≈1 in 585K—Towe12
IE Ireland≈51 est.≈1 in 102K—Towe9
NO Norway≈47 est.≈1 in 116K12—3
FI Finland≈44 est.≈1 in 126K35—1

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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)

Towe is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Töwe

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Töwe

  • Danish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Denmark, Sweden

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Töwe, Towé

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Gabon, Canada

    Also written Towè, Towé

44 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)

Towe 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 enm, alternative form of þou (“thou”)

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

  • In guw, your (second-person singular possessive adjective)

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

  • In cel-pro, genitive singular of *tū: your sg, thy

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

  • In urj-pro, lake, pond

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

  • In klw, pity

    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)

1850190019502000Harry Lancaster Towe, b. 1898Peter Towe, b. 1922Kenneth M. Towe, b. 1935Monte Towe, b. 1953Matt Towe, b. 1988Matthew Towe, b. 1988

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)

FormalDear Towe,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 16 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Towe
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.9K#11,051
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.8K#10,518
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.6K#11,426
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002266#17,720
US United Stateswru 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

What does the name Towe mean, and where does it come from?
Main GB Location (1881): Warwicks, Leics, and. see Tough . Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Nordic Names.
How do you pronounce Towe?
A machine transcription gives /ˈtoʊ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Towe have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Towe in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled towe.
How common is the name Towe?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,877 people named Towe in 2010, about 1 in 116 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Towe?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Towe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Towe parses inside a full name →