Rew

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Rew is a surname, most frequently recorded in the United States. It appears chiefly in English and Welsh, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Lanarks; Argyll. locative name from Middle English rew (Old English rāw) ‘row’.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 144K
  • USUnited States1 in 250K
  • CACanada1 in 173K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

Meaning & origin

Main GB Location (1881): Lanarks; Argyll. locative name from Middle English rew (Old English rāw) ‘row’. The surname may be topographic, signifying someone who lived by a hedgerow or in a row of houses in a street, or toponymic, signifying someone who lived in a place so named, such as Rewe (Devon), Rew Farm in Rockbeare (Devon), and Rew in Malborough (Devon). See also Raw (1) and Row .

Sources 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary

Where in the world

Where Rew is recorded, by country
CountryShare of this name
US United States10,58974%
GB United Kingdom1,3419%
CA Canada3953%
AU Australia3472%
IN India661%

12,738 recorded bearers across the countries shown (a sample of the full distribution).

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages

  • English13K91%
  • Welsh2842%
  • Spanish2182%
  • Arabic671%
  • Hindi651%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English13,04891%
Welsh2842%
Spanish2182%
Arabic671%
Hindi651%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Notable people with this name

18501900195020002050Robert Henry Rew, b. 1858Noel Ackroyd Rew, b. 1880Charles Rew, b. 1898Kimberley Rew, b. 1951Quentin Rew, b. 1984James Rew, b. 2004

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence

Attested in 17 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Rew
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.4K#18,045
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.2K#21,736
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#23,835
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls33#8,022
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198810
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)9#126,713
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)19868
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)19848
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)19798
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)19947
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)19927
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)19827

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-06 data build · 86 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Rew?
Our records include 12,738 bearers of Rew across 5 countries — a sample of the full distribution.
In which country does Rew have the most bearers?
Rew is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What does the name Rew mean?
Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Lanarks; Argyll. locative name from Middle English rew (Old English rāw) ‘row’.
Query this name via API
curl https://nelma-api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/rew

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Rew”. Data snapshot 2026-08-31.

See how Rew parses inside a full name →