Given name & surname · also Hokkien
Lao
Lao is a surname from Hokkien, ultimately from English. It is used in Tagalog.
Meaning & origin
Where it comes from
Lao comes from Hokkien, and ultimately from English.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1981. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Lao through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 32
- 32 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 1985
- 7 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 5 in 1991. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Its largest published annual count for boys was 7 in 1985. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 509 as a first name in 2020; 6,668 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Lao’s family of names
In Filipino usage, Lao as a surname shares an earlier linguistic root with Lew. In Filipino usage, Lao as a surname shares an earlier linguistic root with Liu.
The ring: across languages.
Across languages 5
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
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