as a Last Name
- 1,600
- people in the U.S. have this name View all people named Bow
Meaning & Origins
English: metonymic occupational name for a maker or seller of bows, from Middle English bow (Old English boga, from būgan ‘to bend’). Before the invention of gunpowder, the bow was an important long-range weapon for shooting game as well as in warfare. Boga is also found as a personal name in Old English, and it is possible that this survived into Middle English and so may lie behind the surname in some instances. In other cases (for example, Richard atte Bowe, 1306), the name is topographic, from the same word in the transferred sense ‘arched bridge’, ‘river bend’, an allusion to their similarity in shape to a drawn bow.
| 15,797th in the U.S. for 2011 |
Nicknames & variations
Quick facts
- Hundreds
- of people in the U.S have this name
- 1,600
- to be exact (as of February 2011)
- Hawaii
- has the most people named Bow per capita
Top state populations
U.S. Distribution Map
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