Lawa
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lawa is a surname, most frequently recorded in the Philippines. In Christmas Island it is the 15th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Indonesian, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: An ethnic group of Laos and northern Thailand.
- PHPhilippines1 in 175K◐
- CXChristmas Island1 in 1.9K
- BEBelgium1 in 55K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.4K ●
- Sources
- 33 ●
- 1 in 55K ◐
across 12 countries
2.9K records
Official registry-verified
Belgium
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lava in SE Sweden, DE Germany, AT Austria and 2 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
An ethnic group of Laos and northern Thailand.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | — | 1,338 | 1.3K rec. | — | — | Lawa | 16 |
| BR Brazil | — | 628 | — | 1 in 337K | 628 | — | — |
| US United States | — | 309 | 502 rec. | 1 in 1.1M | 375 | Lawa | 33 |
| NG Nigeria | — | 264 | 400 rec. | — | — | Lawa | 21 |
| BE Belgium | — | 214△ | 3 rec. | 1 in 55K | 214 | — | 4 |
| DE Germany | — | 210 | 388 rec. | — | 1 | Lava | 29 |
| ES Spain | — | 111 | 0 rec. | 1 in 451K | 111 | — | 1 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | 52 | 25 rec. | — | — | Lawa | 9 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 45 | 25 rec. | 1 in 384K | 45 | Lawa | 13 |
| AT Austria | — | 40 | 21 rec. | — | 7 | Lava | 12 |
| FR France | — | 37 | — | 1 in 1.8M | 37 | — | — |
| AU Australia | — | 31 | 54 rec. | — | 1 | Lawa | 14 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English1.9K31%
- Indonesian1.6K26%
- Spanish70311%
- Swahili5679%
- Portuguese2264%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 1,934 | 31% |
| Indonesian | 1,613 | 26% |
| Spanish | 703 | 11% |
| Swahili | 567 | 9% |
| Portuguese | 226 | 4% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Lawa 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 Malay, beautiful
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, salad
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In alj, spider
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nij, small yellow spider that is eaten, and which tastes like a sea crab; spiderweb
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Polish, lava (molten rock ejected by a volcano from its crater or fissured sides)
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.
Evidence●
Attested in 15 sources across 8 countries.
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 92 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Lawa?
- We estimate roughly 1.4 thousand people bear Lawa (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Lawa have the most bearers?
- Lawa is most frequently recorded in the Philippines, where it is most often spelled lawa.
- How common is Lawa compared with other names?
- In Christmas Island, Lawa is the 15th most common surname of 43 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Lawa mean?
- Recorded meaning: An ethnic group of Laos and northern Thailand.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lawaThe 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. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Lawa” — the 15th most common surname in Christmas Island. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.