St. Louis
A surname from the French place name and saint’s name Louis, often borne by families linked to places or churches called Saint Louis.
The #6,569 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 59,858 Americans shares it.
Etymology
St. Louis is a French surname formed from the saint’s name Louis, written with the honorific Saint/ St. and usually tied to place names, parish names, or family identification with a locale called Saint-Louis. The name ultimately goes back to the Germanic personal name Hludwig, meaning roughly “famous battle,” which later became Latinized and Frenchified as Ludovicus and Louis. In surname form, it can indicate someone from a Saint Louis place-name or someone associated with devotion to Saint Louis.
History
The surname is most strongly associated with French-speaking regions and with French or French-derived naming practices in the Caribbean, North America, and parts of Africa. In modern records it often appears both as St. Louis and as a spaced or hyphenated variant, reflecting the same underlying French form. Because it is a saint-name surname rather than a classic hereditary occupational name, it may have arisen independently in more than one family or region.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The name Louis behind Saint Louis is the French form of the same old Germanic name that also gave English the name Lewis.