Louise

96,368 people in America carry this name — ranked #566 of 923.

Its American moment came before the war.

Say it loo EEZ

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

L UW0 IY1 Z — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 96,368 2020 Census
  • Rank #566 Familiar

What Louise means and where it comes from

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “famous war”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Louise name popularity by year

336,051 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1920, with 9,226 of them.

80 90 00 10 20s 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Louise

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Louise Elizabeth — runs together
  • Louise Lisa — same opening
  • Louise Emily — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Louise was 1920. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

Is Louise used for boys or for girls?

1.2% men
95,172 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Where the name Louise is most common in the US

In Maine the name is given 2.9 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Maine ×2.9
  • Vermont ×2.7
  • Massachusetts ×2.1
  • New York ×1.9
  • the District of Columbia ×1.8

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The same name elsewhere

  • Luis Port.|Span
  • Lova Swedish
  • Lood Dutch
  • Loïz Breton
  • Loïs Brit
  • Luiza Portuguese
  • Luise German
  • Luisa Span.|Port
  • Luigi Italian
  • Louis French
  • Looys French
  • Lodve Norwegian
  • Lewis English
  • Lajos Hungarian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Spellings of Louise

Louise is how 33% of them spell it — 292,863 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin