Carlow Last Name Facts and Heraldry

Heraldry is personal. Arms recorded for a Carlow family belonged to that family, and other bearers of the name may have no link to them.

Family name meaning

People named Carlow share a Scottish surname with a long history. Elsdon Smith's dictionary of American family names explains it as “one who came from Carlowrie (speaking rock), in Scotland”.

That makes it a habitational name, first given to someone from that place. The name also appears as Carlough. The 2010 census count for Carlow in the United States was 703, good for rank 32,676. That puts it inside the top 50,000 US surnames. Similar-sounding surnames on Herald Lab: Carlo, Carl and Carollo.

Want more than a summary? See the Carlow family name pack.