Marlow is an Old English surname from the place name Marlow in Buckinghamshire, England — from mere (lake or pond) and lafe (remnants, leavings), meaning something like "the remains of the lake" after drainage. With only about 1,704 SSA records and a 2024 peak, Marlow as a girls' name is genuinely new and genuinely rising, driven by the same aesthetic forces that elevated Harlow, Marlowe, and Marlo in the past decade.
The Marlow/Marlowe Distinction
Marlow and Marlowe — the -e spelling — are essentially the same name with a different visual ending. Marlowe brings the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine) and the fictional detective Philip Marlowe of Raymond Chandler's novels. Marlow without the E is the place name spelling, slightly more grounded and less literary. Compare Marlow and Marlowe, the E adds literary weight; without it the name reads as more purely geographic and modern. Both are currently rising for girls.
The Harlow Aesthetic
Harlow, from the same Old English surname tradition, has been rising as a girls' name for a decade, carrying golden-age Hollywood glamour from Jean Harlow. Marlow has a similar structure and aesthetic without the specific Hollywood association. Names in the Harlow-Marlow-Marlowe cluster share a sound that feels both preppy and cool: the Mar- opening is warm, the -lo/-low/-lowe ending is open and unhurried. It is a very specific aesthetic, parents who love it tend to love the whole family of names.
The Counter-Reading: The Literary Weight
Even without the E, Marlow will be consistently associated with Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective archetype, by readers and literary parents. That association is largely positive but it is masculine: Marlowe/Marlow has been almost exclusively a male name in literary culture. Choosing it for a daughter is a deliberate gender-boundary crossing, which may be exactly the point for many parents, but worth naming as a conscious choice. Rising surname-names for girls often work precisely by claiming territory that was historically male.