Lou
About 38,198 American babies have been named Lou since 1880, most of them around 1954. In 2025 it ranked 2,645th. About 18,000 Lous are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 69.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lou boys named Lou
Girls and boys called Lou
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Lou crossed from girls to boys in 1985, and has stayed there for 20 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 81% boys, and in 2025 it was 55%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 133 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 38,198
- Estimated living today
- 18,000
- Median age today
- 69
- Peak year
- 1954
- Best rank
- 204th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,645th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 34,109 / 4,089
How old the living Lous are
born that year still alive today
Of the 38,198 babies given the name since 1880, about 18,000 are alive — 47 in every hundred. Roughly 1,400 of them are children and 13,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1956 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Lous
- Lou Reed (1942–2013)American rock musician
- Lou Andreas-Salomem (1861–1937)German-Russian essayist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst
- Lou Henry Hoover (1874–1944)First Lady of the United States from 1929 to 1933
- Lou Gehrig (1903–1941)American baseball player
- Lou Ferrigno (born 1951)American actor and bodybuilder
- Lou Diamond Phillips (born 1962)American actor
- Lou Bega (born 1975)German singer
- Lou Costello (1906–1959)American actor and comedian
People named Lou with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lou is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lou is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.6×), Oklahoma (3.1×), Arkansas (3.0×), Kentucky (3.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1954
The most popular girls’ names the year Lou peaked:
Lou elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Lou +2 spellings | 55,060 | 26th |
| France boys | Lou | 4,340 | 240th |
| Belgium girls | Lou | 3,491 | 26th |
| Belgium boys | Lou | 2,626 | 27th |
| Switzerland girls | Lou | 1,847 | 46th |
| Switzerland boys | Lou | 421 | 316th |
| England and Wales girls | Lou | 62 | 2,499th |
| England and Wales boys | Lou | 22 | 3,013th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Lou: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Lou | 1,055 | 0.085% | 55th |
| German boys | Switzerland | Lou | 348 | 0.028% | 282nd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Lou | 775 | 0.178% | 26th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Lou | 72 | 0.017% | 326th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Lou | 13 | 0.020% | 110th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Lou | 1 | 0.002% | 186th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Lou | 4 | 0.108% | 15th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Lou is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.21% of children were given it – 31 of them.
Lou: rank by region
In 2025, Lou was given 5 times or more in 5 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lou | 24 | 129 |
| Flanders | Lou | 38 | 96 |
| Wallonia | Lou | 34 | 72 |
| Wallonia | Lou | 152 | 19 |
| Brussels | Lou | 107 | 10 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lou appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (24th), Province of Namur (25th), Province of Walloon Brabant (26th), Province of Antwerp (27th), Province of Limburg (29th), Province of West Flanders (30th), Province of Liège (32nd), Province of East Flanders (34th), Province of Hainaut (37th), Province of West Flanders (38th), Province of Antwerp (39th), Province of Luxembourg (46th), Province of Flemish Brabant (52nd), Province of Flemish Brabant (59th), Province of Limburg (81st), Brussels-Capital Region (107th) and Province of Hainaut (131st).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Lou by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 116 | 138th |
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 34 | 258th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Lou among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Lou | 16 | 38 |
| Finland boys | Lou | — | 14 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Lou against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.