Lawson

114,522 people in America carry this name — ranked #267 of 777.

A surname with a trade, a place or a father behind it.

Say it LAW suhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

L AO1 S AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

People counted 114,522 2020 Census
Rank #267 Common
As a first name 11,171 ranked #2,303 the other way round

What Lawson means and where it comes from

Reads literally as “the son of Law, the familiar abbreviation of Lawrence”.

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.

By sound First names that fit Lawson Which names sit well before it, and which rhyme or double up — with the reason for each.

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.

Surnames with the same rhythm as Lawson

Ends on the same sound

Dawson 80,960

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

How Lawson is spelled

Lawson is how 48% of them spell it — 238,972 people answer to the sound.

Lawrence 52%
Lawson 48%

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 Adult Height

Open Adult Height 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