Lau

At the 2020 census, 30,237 Americans bore the surname Lau — 1,136th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 9,885.

By the numbers

People: 30,237
Rank: 1,136th
How common: 1 in 9,885
Per 100,000: 10.1

Where the name comes from

Origin Chinese

From yue, nan-hbl or nan-tws.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Lau described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 76.1%
White, not Hispanic 15.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.5%
Hispanic or Latino 3.9%
Black, not Hispanic 0.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.09%

Notable people called Lau

Andy Lau (born 1961)Hong Kong actor, film producer, and singer
Carina Lau (born 1965)Hong Kong actress
Henry Lau (born 1989)Taiwnanese-Canadian singer and musician
Frederick Lau (born 1989)German actor
Grace Lau (born 1991)Hong Kong karateka
Andrew Lau (born 1960)Hong Kong filmmaker
Sean Lau (born 1964)Hong Kong actor
Jutta Lau (born 1955)East German rower

People named Lau with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Lau

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.