Lawley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Lawley, Shropshire; from ‘Lafa’s glade’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɫɔɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lawley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 39K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 85K
- USUnited States1 in 145K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 284 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)
≈26,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Lawley, Shropshire; from ‘Lafa’s glade’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lawley 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Lawley | 1 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Lawley | 1 |
| US United States | 2,292 | 1 in 145K | 2.3K | Lawley | 284 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 39K | listed | Lawley | 150 |
| CA Canada | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 123K | — | Lawley | 100 |
| AU Australia | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Lawley | 72 |
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 2000; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)
Lawley 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, from Lawley, Shropshire; first attested Roger de Laueleg’ 1221 AssSa
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
habitational name from Lawley in Shropshire, named in Old English as ‘Lafa’s wood’, from a personal name Ldfa (from Idf ‘remnant’, ‘survivor’) -f leah ‘wood’, ‘glade’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, from OProv. aver possessions, property (from the verb from a place in Shrops., so called from the OE personal aver to have, possess, L habere), with fused def. art. le. name Ldfa (from Idf remnant, survivor) + OE leak wood, In SE France the word is used of a flock of sheep (the clearing. principal form of property in the area) and the surname 367 Lazar Lawlor Lawty
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, from a place in Shrops., so called from the OE personal name Ldfa (from laf remnant, survivor) + OE leak wood, clearing.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A locality in Longnor parish, Shropshire, England (OS grid ref SO5098).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Robert Lawley, 1st Baron Wenlockb. 1768FRBritish politician
- Paul Thompson, 1st Baron Wenlockb. 1784GBnot in their usual nameBritish politician
- Beilby Lawley, 2nd Baron Wenlockb. 1818GBBritish Baron and politician
- Francis Charles Lawleyb. 1825GBBritish politician
- Beilby Lawley, 3rd Baron Wenlockb. 1849GBEnglish soldier, politician (1849-1912)
- Arthur Lawley, 6th Baron Wenlockb. 1860GBBritish soldier, peer, colonial governor (1860-1932)
- Sue Lawleyb. 1946GBBritish broadcaster
- Melissa Lawleyb. 1994GBEnglish footballer
- Kian Lawleyb. 1995USAmerican YouTuber and actor
- Gemma Lawleyb. 2002GBEnglish footballer
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.3K | #12,168 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.3K | #13,306 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,902 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lawley mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Lawley, Shropshire; from ‘Lafa’s glade’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Lawley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Lawley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lawley.
- How do you pronounce Lawley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫɔɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Lawley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,292 people named Lawley in 2010, about 1 in 145 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lawley?
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/lawleyThe 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, “Lawley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.