Lau is Yiddish for ‘lion’, I think.
Leo in English, Aryeh in Hebrew, etc.
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You didn't dig very deep into Wikipedia. LAU is a VERY, very common name in Chinese, both Mandarin and Cantonese.
The following is from http://genforum.genealogy.com/lau/messages/127.html
1) The most popular one is the family name of the kings that rule the Han dynasty in ancient China. It is also a fairly common last name among ethnic Chinese
2) Another translation of Lau is willow (a kind of tree that usually grows along the river).
3) the third translation of Lau is (tall) building.
4) waterfall
Chinese isn't especially rich in vocabulary. In fact, their language has a definite DEARTH of vocabulary. HOWEVER, they are RICH in the use of TONES.
Mandarin Tones: http://www.chinese-lessons.com/conversion/toneConversion.htm
Mandarin is more of a super-group of dialects than a single language. For simplicity, Beijing area Mandarin will be assumed when using the term Mandarin throughout the website.
Mandarin, the basis of putonghua , has a complicated relationship to Middle Chinese. In this dialect there are 4 standard tones and a neutral 5th tone. Because of this, many of the Middle Chinese tone categories are merged. Additionally, both Category 7 (Ru-Yin) and Category 8 (Ru-Yang) are distributed among the modern Mandarin tones in a complicated manner.
Middle Chinese
Ping = Even
Shang = Rising
Qu = Leaving
Ru = Entering
Mandarin Tone
1 - High tone
2 - Rising tone
3- Dipping tone
4- Falling tone
Variations between three and four
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I took Cantonese WAY back when and I learned that there are actually 14 tones. THEY "toned" how you spoke to people. Each of the tones specified an attitude.
It's as complicated as OUR vocabulary.
I figured that this was one of the many reasons why Chinese have such a difficult time with NON-Chinese languages. They have to TOSS out their entire repertory of TONES...then learn English.
Example: Chinese, when learning English, DON'T raise their voice in tone when asking a question. One is SUPPOSED to slightly raise the tone for a question...and conversely LOWER for the end of a sentence.