Lucus
Masculine · “Respelling of Lucas”
Lucus is Lucas with the final vowel changed, and by accident it lands on a real Latin word. Lucus means a sacred grove — a stand of trees set aside for a god — and it is famous in Latin grammar for one of the worst etymologies ever proposed.
How old is the name Lucus?
Lucus first appears in US birth records in 1909 — 116 years ago. The typical Lucus alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 1,700 people named Lucus are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lucus most popular?
Lucus peaked in 1980, reaching #1070 nationally. Today it ranks #7194, 6,124 places below that high. See the whole 1980 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Loukas to Lucus
The story of Lucus
The respelling appears in the American figures well before the modern respelling boom, with a peak in 1980, at a time when Lucas itself was climbing. Substituting u for a in an unstressed syllable is the single most common respelling move in English, because unstressed vowels are all pronounced the same and the spelling therefore carries no information. That is also why the change survives: nobody hearing the name can tell which spelling was meant. The Latin grove sense entered English only as a technical term in classical scholarship, and Lucus as a place name survives in Spain and Italy from Roman settlements named for groves.
Meaningscholars disagree
Respelling of Lucas; separately, Latin "sacred grove"
As an American name it is a respelling of Lucas, which comes through Greek Loukas, a man from Lucania. As a Latin word, lucus is a grove consecrated to a deity, and Roman grammarians derived it from lucere, to shine, on the grounds that a grove is where light does not enter — lucus a non lucendo, the standard classical example of a ridiculous derivation. The two are unrelated. Almost every American Lucus is the respelling, not the Latin noun.
How the name formed
- Loukas
- Lucas
- Lucus
Related forms: Lucas · Λουκᾶς · Luc
Pronouncing Lucus
LOO-kus
Two syllables, stress on the first, identical to Lucas. The Latin word is said LOO-koos with a full second vowel, but that pronunciation is not used for the name.
Nicknames for Lucus
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1909
- Most boys named
- 198071 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1070reached in 1980
- Change vs 2024
- −54.2%11 in 2025, from 24
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Lucus in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Lucas in English — spelling variant
- Λουκᾶς in Greek — related form
- Luc in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York.
Lucuss among us
people named Lucus are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 155,280 born in 2025 was named Lucus
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Lucus
- #7194
- Lucus on the 2025 chart
- #905
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Lucus went to 11 boys in 2025, but Lukus is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 23, which makes it the 905th most-given boys’ name of the year — 6,289 places above the chart.
- Lukus12
- Lucus11
About 1 boy in 74,264 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 155,280 for Lucus itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Shigeo test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Lucus's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Shigeo climbed just as high around 1916, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Shigeo's path sketches the road Lucus is walking now.
Lucus sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Lucus beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Lucus in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is said exactly like Lucas, a name everyone already knows.
- It happens to coincide with a genuine Latin noun, which gives it a real word behind it.
- Luke is an immediate and settled short form.
- It will be corrected to Lucas constantly, in writing and on forms.
- Spell-checkers flag it and often auto-correct it.
- The Latin sense is a coincidence, not an inheritance, and should not be claimed as the name's meaning.
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Lucus
Masculine · #7194 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lucuss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,700 people named Lucus are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Lucus?
- Lucus is one of 2 recorded spellings. Lukus is the more common one — 12 births in 2025 against 11 for Lucus.
- How popular is the name Lucus in 2025?
- Lucus ranks #7194 among US boy names in 2025, with 11 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Lucus?
- About 1 in every 155,280 US boys born in 2025 was named Lucus — 11 in all.
- Will my child share the name Lucus with classmates?
- Lucus will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Lucus
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Junius#7194 · Orie#7194 · Shade#7194 · Chesley#7194 · Joesph#7194 · Lofton#7194 · Macon#7194 · Benjiman#7194
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lucus? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Lucus and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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