Laine

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: wool

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025

/lɛn/(recorded in a dictionary) French · from Wiktionary

Say it in

Laine is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country, where it is the 41st most common surname.

  • FIFinland1 in 133(measured from records)
  • EEEstonia≈1 in 3.4Kfew records
  • FRFrance≈1 in 6.1K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Finland (measured from records)

41,834 people

Record sources
118 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 133 (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

ornamental name from laine ‘wave’. This is one of the most common names among those that were derived from words denoting natural features when hereditary surnames were adopted in Finland in the beginning of the 20th century. This name is found chiefly in southern Finland.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

How Laine is read

(measured from records)

Laine is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English40%

    Cleo, British singer

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • French38%

    wool

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Finnish6.3%

    wave

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Laine, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Laine 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.

Where Laine is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FI Finland#4141,8341 in 13342KLaine107
FR France—≈11,000 est.≈1 in 6.1K1.6K—2
US United States—3,4561 in 96K3.5KLaine118
BR Brazil—≈1,400 est.≈1 in 148K8.3K—1
SE Sweden—9531 in 11K953Laine38
EE Estonia#297≈410 est.≈1 in 3.4K1.3KLaine19
NO Norway—1041 in 53K104Laine12

41,834 people counted by DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the ee-stat-nimed register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Laine is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Finland, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Lainé, Läïnë, Laîné, Lainê, Lainë

  • English surname15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Finland, Australia

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Lainé, Lāįnë, Laîné, Låine, Lainè

  • French surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Canada

    Also written Lainé, Laîné, L'Aîné, L'Aine, Lainè

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Lainé, Laĭne, Laîné, Laíne

  • Swedish surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, United States

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Lainé, Láiné

  • Indonesian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Finland, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Lainé, Låinë

  • Hindi surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, United Kingdom, India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Lainé, Laíne, Lainè

65 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

(measured from records)

Laine is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • ornamental name from laine ‘wave’. This is one of the most common names among those that were derived from words denoting natural features when hereditary surnames were adopted in Finland in the beginning of the 20th century. This name is found chiefly in southern Finland.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • metonymic occupational name for a worker or dealer in wool, from Old French la(i)ne ‘wool’ (Latin lana).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • perhaps a variant spelling of Lane.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)
190019502000Edvin Laine, b. 1905Cleo Laine, b. 1927Erkki Laine, b. 1957Vanessa Laine Bryant, b. 1982Sarah Laine, b. 1982Charlie Laine, b. 1984Emma Laine, b. 1986Cassie Laine, b. 1992Skylar Laine, b. 1994Patrik Laine, b. 1998

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).

How to address them

(machine-generated)
FormalDear Ms Laine,
InformalHi Laine,

Evidence

(measured from records)

54 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.

Reference works 6

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce Laine?
It depends on the language: in French /lɛn/ (Wiktionary); in Finnish /ˈlɑ̝i̯ne̞(ʔ)/ (Wiktionary).
Where does the name Laine come from?
ornamental name from laine ‘wave’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
What does the name Laine mean?
In French, wool
In which country does Laine have the most bearers?
In Finland, the national register counted about 42 thousand people named Laine, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled laine.
Where is Laine most common?
Laine is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 133 people carrying it.
How common is the name Laine?
In Finland, the national register counted 41,834 people named Laine, about 1 in 133 residents.
How common is Laine compared with other names?
In Finland, Laine is the 41st most common surname of 94,499 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Laine?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/laine

The 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, “Laine” — the 41st most common surname in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Laine parses inside a full name →