Marlowe is an English surname and place name, from Marlow on the Thames, whose Old English name means "land left by a drained lake" or "remnants of a mere". The playwright Christopher Marlowe and the detective Philip Marlowe gave it a literary, slightly rakish image, and it has become a girls' name in America since the 2010s. Marlowe entered the US top 1000 in 2020 and has risen to number 523 in 2025, its best rank so far.