Lum
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lum is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: person from Lumb, Lancashire and Yorkshire ('place by a pool').
- SGSingapore1 in 5.9K◐
- MYMalaysia1 in 20K
- AUAustralia1 in 24K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈8.3K ●
- Sources
- 328 ●
- 1 in 41K ◐
across 11 countries
85K records
Official registry-verified
United States
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Luem in CH Switzerland, ES Spain.
Meaning & origin●
person from Lumb, Lancashire and Yorkshire ('place by a pool')
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 8,060 | 69K rec. | 1 in 41K | 8.1K | Lum | 328 |
| AU Australia | — | 3,461 | 3.3K rec. | — | — | Lum | 118 |
| CA Canada | — | 3,075 | 3K rec. | — | — | Lum | 108 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 2,783 | 2.5K rec. | — | — | Lum | 76 |
| SG Singapore | #382 | 1,646 | 1.6K rec. | — | — | Lum | 93 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 1,624 | 1.7K rec. | — | — | Lum | 69 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | 263 | 213 rec. | — | — | Lum | 42 |
| DE Germany | — | 248 | 312 rec. | — | 1 | Lum | 35 |
| IT Italy | — | 174 | 205 rec. | — | 1 | Lum | 8 |
| HK Hong Kong | #905 | 153 | 158 rec. | — | — | Lum | 35 |
| CM Cameroon | — | 80 | 393 rec. | — | — | Lum | 18 |
| PL Poland | — | 70△ | 3 rec. | 1 in 547K | 70 | — | 1 |
Roughly 8.1K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 41K). 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●
- English76K74%
- Spanish3.6K4%
- Chinese3.4K3%
- Malay3.2K3%
- Swahili2.1K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 76,479 | 74% |
| Spanish | 3,595 | 4% |
| Chinese | 3,401 | 3% |
| Malay | 3,229 | 3% |
| Swahili | 2,093 | 2% |
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●
Lum 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 English, 4. Chinese )!$: possibly a variant of Lan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A chimney; also, the top part of a chimney.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Chinese variant of Lin
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, variant of Lamb.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In mna, algae (green, slimy growth on trees and on stones under the water)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1963 | 1 |
| 1965 | 1 |
| 1966 | 1 |
| 1970 | 2 |
| 1972 | 1 |
| 1973 | 1 |
| 1974 | 1 |
| 1975 | 4 |
| 1976 | 1 |
| 1978 | 1 |
| 1979 | 3 |
| 1980 | 2 |
| 1981 | 1 |
| 1982 | 3 |
| 1983 | 1 |
| 1984 | 3 |
| 1985 | 8 |
| 1986 | 6 |
| 1987 | 9 |
| 1988 | 6 |
| 1989 | 10 |
| 1990 | 9 |
| 1991 | 4 |
| 1992 | 10 |
| 1993 | 10 |
| 1994 | 11 |
| 1995 | 15 |
| 1996 | 7 |
| 1997 | 10 |
| 1998 | 27 |
| 1999 | 17 |
| 2000 | 17 |
| 2001 | 19 |
| 2002 | 19 |
| 2003 | 16 |
| 2004 | 15 |
| 2005 | 16 |
| 2006 | 11 |
| 2007 | 15 |
| 2008 | 24 |
| 2009 | 25 |
| 2010 | 19 |
| 2011 | 26 |
| 2012 | 23 |
| 2013 | 32 |
| 2014 | 38 |
| 2015 | 30 |
| 2016 | 44 |
| 2017 | 44 |
| 2018 | 41 |
| 2019 | 48 |
| 2020 | 56 |
| 2021 | 67 |
| 2022 | 79 |
| 2023 | 69 |
| 2024 | 94 |
| 2025 | 80 |
XK ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) — 57 years between 1963–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Lin Biaob. 1907CNnot in their usual nameChinese Communist military commander and politician
- Lam Ching-yingb. 1952CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor and choreographer (1952–1997)
- Carrie Lamb. 1957GBnot in their usual nameformer Chief Executive of Hong Kong
- Maya Linb. 1959USnot in their usual nameAmerican sculptor and architect (born 1959)
- Justin Linb. 1971USnot in their usual nameTaiwanian film director
- Dan Linb. 1973TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese-American film producer (born 1973)
- Shu Qib. 1976TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actress (born 1976)
- Lin Danb. 1983CNnot in their usual nameChinese badminton player
- Jeremy Linb. 1988USnot in their usual nameTaiwanese-American basketball player
- Awkwafinab. 1988USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, comedian, and rapper
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 40 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.1K | #4,042 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.1K | #4,406 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.7K | #4,479 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | — | 1.1K | #662 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 155 | #35,436 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2024 | 94 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2025 | 80 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2022 | 79 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 72 | #35,436 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 70 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 70 | #39,444 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2023 | 69 | — |
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 · 215 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Lum?
- We estimate roughly 8.3 thousand people bear Lum (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Lum have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 8.1 thousand people bear Lum in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled lum.
- How common is Lum compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Lum is the 382nd most common surname of 73,194 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Lum mean?
- Recorded meaning: person from Lumb, Lancashire and Yorkshire ('place by a pool')
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lumThe 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, “Lum” — the 382nd most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.