李
surname · Han script
Meaning: from the ancestral surname 理; later branches also took 李 from other lineages and imperial adoption
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/li²¹⁴/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
李 is a surname written in the Han script, with more bearers in China than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common surname.
- MOMacao1 in 11(measured from records)
- TWTaiwan1 in 20
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 178
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 112 (measured from records)
- 1 in 11 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Macao
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from the ancestral surname 理; later branches also took 李 from other lineages and imperial adoption
Sources 1
- 新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
李 counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: MPS — 全国姓名报告 surname frequency (百家姓 top-101); RIS/MOI — Household Registration Statistics (surnames + given names); 全國姓名統計分析 — National Name Statistical Analysis; DSEC Macau — NameStatistic surname sweep (2025 register lookup); DSEC Macau — Name Statistics (百家姓 surnames + common given names); siikamiika/japanese-family-names — myoji-yurai surname dataset. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
李 is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Chinese, surname of multiple origins; many families were later granted the imperial surname 李
as a name新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames)
In Chinese, Surname with multiple origins, including ancient regional clans and ethnic groups such as Xianbei, Di, Huihe, Qidan, Turkic, and others.
as a name中国姓氏大辞典 (Chinese Surnames Mega-Dictionary)
In Chinese, from the Li clan descended from the Ying lineage; later also adopted by several ethnic groups
as a name中国姓氏大辞典 (Chinese Surnames Mega-Dictionary)
In Chinese, plum
as a wordMDBG Chinese Dictionary (CC-CEDICT) — surname sense
In Chinese, plum (tree and fruit)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 10 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | MPS — 全国姓名报告 surname frequency (百家姓 top-101) | 2021 | 101M | #2 |
| CN China | ChineseNames: household-registered population — surnames + given names (no time axis) | — | 87M | #2 |
| TW Taiwan | 全國姓名統計分析 — National Name Statistical Analysis | 2023 | 1.2M | #5 |
| TW Taiwan | RIS/MOI — Household Registration Statistics (surnames + given names) | 2023 | 1.2M | #5 |
| MO Macao | DSEC Macau — Name Statistics (百家姓 surnames + common given names) | — | 56K | #3 |
| MO Macao | DSEC Macau — NameStatistic surname sweep (2025 register lookup) | — | 56K | #3 |
| JP Japan | siikamiika/japanese-family-names — myoji-yurai surname dataset | — | 8.8K | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name 李 mean, and where does it come from?
- from the ancestral surname 理; later branches also took 李 from other lineages and imperial adoption Recorded by 新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames).
- How do you pronounce 李?
- A machine transcription gives /li²¹⁴/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- In which country does 李 have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 million people named 李 in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled 李.
- Where is 李 most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, 李 is densest in Macao — about 1 in 11 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name 李?
- In Taiwan, the national register counted 1,199,920 people named 李 in 2023, about 1 in 20 residents.
- How common is 李 compared with other names?
- In China, 李 is the 2nd most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about 李?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%E6%9D%8EThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “李” — the 2nd most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.