Lui
A surname found in several cultures, especially as a Chinese family name and as an older Gaelic name element in Ireland.
The #5,641 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 50,154 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Lui is not a single, simple surname of one origin. In Chinese contexts, it is commonly a romanized family name reflecting Cantonese-style spellings of surnames pronounced roughly like Loui/Lui in English transcription. In Irish sources, the spelling may also reflect names built on the Gaelic element luighne or related forms, though the historical excerpts here are too fragmentary to pin down one secure derivation. Because the same spelling can arise independently in different languages, the surname is best treated as multi-origin.
History
The form appears in modern records as a relatively uncommon surname in the United States. In older scholarship, similar-looking spellings are occasionally discussed in Irish and Norman-name contexts, but the OCR excerpts provided do not contain a clear standalone dictionary entry for Lui itself. As a result, its history is best understood as a name that can belong to different families with different origins, rather than one single surname line.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because Lui can come from more than one language tradition, two people with the same surname spelling may not be related at all.
From the historical record
“ou de noue, ou par abr6viation une noe, une noue, pour une prairie travers6e par un ou plusieurs petits cours d'eau qui lui donnent de I'humidite. — Stappers, Diet. Synopt. d'Etym. Pranf., p. 795. Many bearers of the name Nugent in England are immigrants (or descendants”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)