Lū
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lū is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Betawi Udik lo (“you”), from Hokkien 汝 (lú). Doublet of lo.
- USUnited States1 in 9.3K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 11K
- NONorway1 in 12K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 192 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.3K (inferred from the name graph)
35,628 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lu in US United States, ES Spain, AO Angola and 1 more.
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)
- Betawi Udiklo“you”(measured from records)
- Hokkien汝lú(measured from records)
From Betawi Udik lo (“you”), from Hokkien 汝 (lú). Doublet of lo.
Sources 9
- Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
- Wiktionary
- 2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
- Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
- Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lū 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 35,628 | 1 in 9.3K | 47K | Lu | 192 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,818 | 1 in 28K | 1.8K | Lu | 61 |
| AO Angola | #187 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Lu | 11 |
| SE Sweden | — | 766 | 1 in 13K | 766 | — | 5 |
| FI Finland | — | 492 | 1 in 11K | 492 | — | 5 |
| NO Norway | — | 474 | 1 in 12K | 474 | — | 6 |
| DK Denmark | — | 260 | 1 in 23K | 260 | — | — |
| SM San Marino | #146 | — | — | — | Lu | 4 |
35,628 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Lū 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 tuw-pro, 1 resin, gum 2 to fill holes, crevices with resin
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 嚕 /噜
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tuw-pro, 1 смола, вар 2 просмаливать
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In Latvian, upe Francijas austrumu daļā (Loue), Dū kreisā krasta pieteka
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Lauta - grāfiste Īrijā, tās nosaukums īru valodā
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Lü Bub. 160CNChinese warlord and general
- Lü Mengb. 178CNGeneral serving under warlord Sun Quan (178-220)
- Lü Zhib. 241CNEmpress Regent of the Han dynasty (241–180 BC)
- Lü Buweib. 291Chinese merchant and politician of the Qin state (291–235 BC)
- Chuan Leekpaib. 1938THnot in their usual nameThai politician
- Ray Luib. 1956CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor
- Lü Yueb. 1957CNChinese cinematographer and film director
- Lü Lipingb. 1960CNChinese actress
- Lu Hsueh-Fengb. 1964TWTaiwanese actress
- Lü Huihuib. 1989CNChinese javelin thrower
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(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lū mean, and where does it come from?
- From Betawi Udik lo (“you”), from Hokkien 汝 (lú). Doublet of lo. Recorded by Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and Wiktionary and 7 other sources.
- Is Lū a male or female name?
- Lū 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.
- In which country does Lū have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 36 thousand people named Lū, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lu.
- Where is Lū most common?
- Lū is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 9.3 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Lū?
- In the United States, the national register counted 35,628 people named Lū in 2010, about 1 in 9.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Lū compared with other names?
- In San Marino, Lū is the 146th most common surname of 4,503 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lū?
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/l%C5%ABThe 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, “Lū” — the 146th most common surname in San Marino. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.