Liwayway
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Meaning
dawn, early morning light
The story
Liwayway is the Tagalog word for dawn, the first light of morning, used as a girls' name in the Philippines. It carries a specific cultural pedigree: Liwayway has been the name of the country's storied Tagalog weekly since 1922, the magazine that carried generations of serialized novels and komiks, so the word names both daybreak and a piece of Filipino literary history. As a personal name it reads as deliberately Filipino, chosen by families reaching past Spanish-era names toward the language itself. Liway makes a natural short form. The US curve shows a small but steady presence from the 1970s onward, consistent with Filipino-American communities keeping the name alive across generations rather than riding a recent fashion. It is long, musical, and unambiguous about where it comes from, which is exactly the point of choosing it.
How popular is Liwayway around the world?
Liwayway does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
United States
under 5 a year
Liwayway does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Where Liwayway travels
Filipino · dawn (old Tagalog word-name)
Keep exploring
The Liwayway deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Liwayway truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Liwayway fits with your family’s names and surname.
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