Lou

given name · English · Latin script

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

Lou is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Diminutive of Louis or Louise, from Germanic Hludwig, 'famous battle'.

rarermore common
  • SGSingapore1 in 3.1K◐
  • PHPhilippines1 in 3.5K
  • CACanada1 in 3.7K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈66K ●

across 9 countries

Sources
438 ●

1.0M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.3K ◐

France

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Lõü in DZ Algeria and Loù in TN Tunisia.

Meaning & origin●

Diminutive of Louis or Louise, from Germanic Hludwig, 'famous battle'.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Lou is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France—52,960△49 rec.1 in 1.3K53K—9
PH Philippines#46347,29639K rec.——Lou118
GB United Kingdom#49844,66946K rec.——Lou155
CA Canada#49222,62322K rec.—2Lou149
AU Australia#63619,64421K rec.——Lou163
US United States#46910,947816K rec.1 in 30K11KLou438
IT Italy#7247,5877.8K rec.——Lou46
DE Germany—6,8107.4K rec.——Lou105
NL Netherlands—5,2362.5K rec.—428Lou71
BE Belgium#5573,4831.4K rec.—181Lou63
SG Singapore#1843,4523.6K rec.——Lou47
CN China—3,2043.5K rec.——Lou71

Roughly 53K people in France bear this name (about 1 in 1.3K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English1.1M63%
  • French275K16%
  • 96K6%
  • Spanish81K5%
  • French (Côte d’Ivoire)23K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,065,17563%
French275,04316%
96,3656%
Spanish80,6675%
French (Côte d’Ivoire)23,1641%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

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

  • French given name400K records spelled Lou55 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Argentina

    Languages: French, Spanish, Catalan

    Also written Loû, Loù, Lou', Loü, Lôu

  • a separate given name110K records spelled Lou3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, China, Canada

    Also written Loú, Loû

  • Indonesian given name8.9K records spelled Lou9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Loù, Lōu, Lȏű, Löu, Löù

  • Swahili given name5.1K records spelled Lou4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Loü

89 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●

Lou 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 French, Short form of Louis/Louise; Germanic « glorious fighter ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • ,2 Short form of Louis or, less commonly, Louise.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In French, Diminutif de Louise; forme moderne de Louise, d’origine germanique.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Diminutif moderne de Louise/Louis; origine germanique.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • English: short form of LOUIS or, less commonly, LOUISE .

    as a word

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.

Over time●

05001K1.5K1900195020001.5K · 1954

Show as table
Lou in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
1880131
1881114
1882131
1883142
1884146
1885135
1886129
1887147
1888169
1889120
1890132
1891109
1892137
1893137
1894118
1895125
1896130
1897114
1898156
1899125
1900140
190196
1902121
1903133
1904117
1905143
1906100
1907124
1908147
1909140
1910144
1911153
1912212
1913199
1914227
1915285
1916308
1917338
1918371
1919313
1920336
1921320
1922350
1923343
1924381
1925395
1926417
1927489
1928425
1929474
1930468
1931463
1932540
1933534
1934559
1935522
1936506
1937539
1938532
1939502
1940494
1941506
1942536
1943456
1944463
1945399
1946478
1947510
1948439
1949441
1950414
1951440
1952569
19531,434
19541,495
19551,225
19561,066
1957884
1958851
1959706
1960593
1961473
1962396
1963382
1964277
1965225
1966186
1967171
1968169
1969165
1970159
1971134
1972101
197392
197463
197549
197648
197743
197838
197940
198023
198130
198229
198318
198419
198519
198613
198716
198811
198918
199024
199124
199219
199314
199420
199513
199614
199714
199811
19998
200011
200120
200213
200310
200416
200521
200620
200713
200813
200922
201016
201127
201218
201324
201427
201538
201645
201737
201839
201944
202058
202161
202276
202374
202471
202581

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Lou Andreas-Salome, b. 1861Lou Hoover, b. 1874Lou Costello, b. 1906Betty Lou Gerson, b. 1914Lou Antonio, b. 1934Lou Castel, b. 1943Marcia Lucas, b. 1945Lou Ferrigno, b. 1951Melissa Etheridge, b. 1961Amy Adams, b. 1974

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●

Attested in 85 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Lou
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202453K#11
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202011K#1,775
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20206K#1,775
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20244.1K#263
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.6K#8,700
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.9K#10,815
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.4K#11,758
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2.1K#1,027
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—838#5,180
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—838#5,175
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020474—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—428#3,538

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname 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 2026-09-12 data build · 793 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lou?
We estimate roughly 66 thousand people bear Lou (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Lou have the most bearers?
We estimate about 53 thousand people bear Lou in France, more than in any other country in our records.
Where is Lou most common?
Lou is densest in France, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.3 thousand people carrying it.
How common is Lou compared with other names?
In Singapore, Lou is the 184th most common given name of 46,862 given names recorded there.
Is Lou a male or female name?
Lou is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Lou mean?
Recorded meaning: Diminutive of Louis or Louise, from Germanic Hludwig, 'famous battle'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lou

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Lou” — the 184th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Lou parses inside a full name →