Is Lou a male or female name?
Lou is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in France at 93% and male usage in Canada at 52%. Country context changes the answer.
Result without a country hint
This is the response used when the request does not supply a country. It is a fallback, not a claim that every country has the same distribution.
- Association
- female
- Probability
- 90%
- Sample size
- 102,324
- Confidence
- high
Lou by country
Only sources that publish observation counts appear in this table. The probability is the dominant-gender share within that country source; sample sizes from different countries cover different years and should not be treated as population rankings.
| Country | Association | Probability | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| France FR | female | 93% | 59,390 | insee |
| United States US | female | 89% | 38,051 | ssa |
| Switzerland CH | female | 81% | 2,571 | bfs |
| Canada CA | male | 52% | 2,087 | statcan |
| Austria AT | female | 68% | 118 | statat |
| England and Wales GB | female | 74% | 84 | ons |
| Poland PL | female | 65% | 23 | pesel |
Attested in 64 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AG · AT · AU · BB · BD · BE · BI · BW · BZ · CA · CB · CH · CM · CN · CY · DM · ER · ES · FJ · FR · GB · GD · GH · GY · IE · JM · KE · KI · KN · LC · LR · LS · ME · MH · MT · MU · MW · NA · NG · NL · NR · NZ · PG · PH · PL · PW · RS · RW · SB · SC · SE · SL · SZ · TO · TT · TV · UG · US · VC · VU · WS · ZA · ZM · ZW
Lou over time
In the United States, 92% of the babies named Lou in the 1880s were girls, against 46.9% in the 2020s. The name has changed sides over time, so the answer depends on when a person was born. In France, 77.8% of the babies named Lou in the 1980s were girls, against 90.8% in the 2020s.
| Decade of birth | United States: girls | Babies | France: girls | Babies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 92% | 1,483 | — | |
| 1890s | 93% | 1,386 | — | |
| 1900s | 94% | 1,345 | — | |
| 1910s | 90% | 2,821 | — | |
| 1920s | 92% | 4,282 | — | |
| 1930s | 94% | 5,497 | — | |
| 1940s | 92% | 5,149 | — | |
| 1950s | 95% | 9,599 | — | |
| 1960s | 88% | 3,451 | — | |
| 1970s | 75% | 1,027 | — | |
| 1980s | 52% | 344 | 78% | 495 |
| 1990s | 29% | 226 | 88% | 4,295 |
| 2000s | 35% | 244 | 94% | 19,960 |
| 2010s | 45% | 562 | 94% | 20,885 |
| 2020s | 47% | 635 | 91% | 13,695 |
Births per decade from the US Social Security Administration (1880–2024) and INSEE (France, 1900–2025); decades with fewer than 100 babies are left out. See boys' names that became girls' names and French names that changed sex.
Look up Lou with a country
Send a reliable two-letter country code when you have one. Preserve probability, sample size, confidence and source with the category.
curl "https://namegender.com/api/v1/gender?name=Lou&country=FR" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ng_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx"Copy failed. Select and copy the text.
Method and limits
Counted rows come from national registration sources that publish male and female totals. The attested-country list also includes sources that confirm presence but do not publish a sample size. Those two evidence types are kept separate.
Name data describes a population-level association. It does not identify an individual person's gender. Preserve unknown and low-confidence results, and do not use name inference for employment, medical, financial, insurance, legal or eligibility decisions.
Data version: 2026.10. Read the benchmark methodology and database provenance before applying a threshold.
Questions about Lou
Is Lou a male or female name?
Lou is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in France at 93% and male usage in Canada at 52%. Country context changes the answer.
Why can the result for Lou change by country?
A name can have different observed distributions in different populations. A country hint narrows the evidence used by the API instead of treating one global result as universal.
Does the name Lou identify a person's gender?
No. This page describes statistical associations in name records. It cannot identify an individual person and should not be used for consequential decisions.