How

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Either from a place-name Howe/Old Norse haugr “small hill”, or a different form of Hugh

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/haʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

How is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 422K(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 70K
  • SESweden1 in 464K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

789 people, 2010

Sources
233 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 70K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Either from a place-name Howe/Old Norse haugr “small hill”, or a different form of Hugh.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Where in the world(measured from records)

How 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 How is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—7891 in 422K891How233
NO Norway—781 in 70K78—9
BR Brazil—271 in 7.8M27—1
NL Netherlands—251 in 691K25How18
SE Sweden—221 in 464K22—9
CH Switzerland—121 in 700K12—10
SG Singapore#455———How113

789 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)

How is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Argentina, United Kingdom

    Also written Höw

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Malaysia, United States, Singapore

    Also written Hôw

  • German surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Malaysia, Singapore

    Languages: German, English

    Also written Hoew, Höw

63 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)

How 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 OE hōh ‘heel; projecting ridge of land’, or sometimes ON haugr ‘mound, hill’; first attested William de Ho 1121–48 Bury (Essex)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, To what degree or extent.

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

  • In English, ayé, ye; how

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In yol, alternative form of fowe

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

  • In dsb, here

    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)

1800185019001950John How, b. 1813William How, b. 1823Henry How, b. 1828Julia Beatrice How, b. 1867James Eads How, b. 1874Florence Earengey, b. 1877Walter How, b. 1885Foon Chew How, b. 1908Harry How, b. 1919Martin How, b. 1931

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 27 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting How
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020891#28,469
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010789#29,793
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000708#31,014
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—78#18,782
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—27#160,000
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200725#45,141
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—22#23,450
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202412#53,184
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 How mean, and where does it come from?
Either from a place-name Howe/Old Norse haugr “small hill”, or a different form of Hugh. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce How?
A machine transcription gives /haʊ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does How have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 789 people named How, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled how.
Where is How most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, How is densest in Norway — about 1 in 70 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name How?
In the United States, the national register counted 789 people named How in 2010, about 1 in 422 thousand residents.
How common is How compared with other names?
In Singapore, How is the 455th most common surname of 78,292 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about How?

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

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, “How” — the 455th most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how How parses inside a full name →