Ĺaw
surname · Latin script
Ĺaw is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: 1. from a Middle English short form of Lawrence. 2. topographic name for someone who lived near a hill, northern Middle English law (from Old English hldw ‘hill’, ‘burial mound’).
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 2K(inferred from the name graph)
- THThailand≈1 in 18Kas เอี่ยม
- USUnited States1 in 60Kas Lam
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ĺaw itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 482 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,600 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Lam in HK Hong Kong, MY Malaysia, SG Singapore, Law in US United States and ลำ in TH Thailand.
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)
- Old Englishhldw(measured from records)
- Englandto(measured from records)
1. from a Middle English short form of Lawrence. 2. topographic name for someone who lived near a hill, northern Middle English law (from Old English hldw ‘hill’, ‘burial mound’). IHaHSEEi Richard Law emigrated from England to America in 1638. In 1641 he was one of the founders of Stamford, CT. Others of the Law family were born in Milford, CT: Jonathan (b. 1674), who was governor 1741-50, Richard (b. 1733), a revolutionary patriot and jurist; and Andrew (b. 1748/49), a composer of sacred music.
Sources 7
- A dictionary of surnames
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ĺaw 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Lam | 111 |
| US United States | 5,542as Lam | 1 in 60K | 60K | Law | 482 |
| TH Thailand | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 18K | #559,660 | ลำ | 100 |
| HK Hong Kong | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Lam | 130 |
| BR Brazil | 1,359as Iam | 1 in 156K | 1.8K | — | 3 |
| SG Singapore | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Lam | 115 |
| FI Finland | 94as Lam | 1 in 59K | 419 | — | 14 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Ĺaw mean, and where does it come from?
- 1. from a Middle English short form of Lawrence. 2. topographic name for someone who lived near a hill, northern Middle English law (from Old English hldw ‘hill’, ‘burial mound’). Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and Dictionary of American Family Names and 5 other sources.
- In which country does Ĺaw have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.6 thousand people named Ĺaw in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lam.
- How common is the name Ĺaw?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,542 people named Lam in 2020, about 1 in 60 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ĺaw?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C4%BAawThe 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, “Ĺaw”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.