Bow
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Bow is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. Recorded meaning: (i) ‘maker or seller of bows’; (ii) ‘person who lives by a bridge, a bend in the river, etc’.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- CACanada
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 273 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) ‘maker or seller of bows’; (ii) ‘person who lives by a bridge, a bend in the river, etc’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bow counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | — | listed | Bow | 120 |
| US United States | — | 1.8K | Bow | 273 |
| CA Canada | — | 1 | Bow | 57 |
| AU Australia | — | 1 | Bow | 103 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 16 | Bow | 11 |
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: the reaney-english-surnames-1991 register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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)
Bow 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 atte Bowe/Bogh; first attested Henry atte Bowe, atte Bogh 1298, 1304 PN D.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Henry atte Bowe, atte Bogh 1298, 1304 PN D 513; Richard atte Bowe 1306 LLB B;
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A weapon made of a curved piece of wood or other flexible material whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Akan, bundle of tobacco-leaves, commonly called 2ihead or hand of tobacco
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In Akan, V. l.to become tough (of clay in pottery). — 2. s. red. bobgw
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
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)
- Richard Bowb. 1868AUAustralian politician
- William Bowb. 1882CABritish Canadian architect (1882-1956)
- Malcolm Ross Bowb. 1887CACanadian public health officer (1887-1982)
- Frank T. Bowb. 1901USAmerican politician (1901-1972)
- Clara Bowb. 1905USAmerican actress (1905–1965)
- Simmy Bowb. 1921USAmerican actor (1921-1987)
- Glen Bowb. 1935Australian rules footballer
- Erin Bowb. 1972CAAmerican/Canadian author
- Landon Bowb. 1995CACanadian ice hockey player
- Bow Andersonb. 1997GBScottish singer-songwriter
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)
Attested in 26 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.8K | #14,823 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #16,909 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #16,886 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 15 | #56,055 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of English Surnames (Reaney & Wilson, 1991) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Bow mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘maker or seller of bows’; (ii) ‘person who lives by a bridge, a bend in the river, etc’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Bow have the most bearers?
- Bow is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled bow.
What do you want to know about Bow?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bowThe 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; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Bow”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.