Lèigh
surname · Latin script
Lèigh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 38,258 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020. Recorded meaning: From Middle English legh, lege, lei (“clearing, open ground”) from Old English lēah (“clearing in a forest”) from Proto-Germanic *lauhaz (“meadow”), from Proto-Indo-European *lówkos (“field, meadow”).. Lèigh is also written 래이 in Korean (Hangul).
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.7K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.7K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lèigh itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 548 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
38,258 people, 2020
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Lèigh in other scripts: Korean (Hangul)
(measured from records)Locally spelled Leigh in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 5 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Middle Englishlegh“clearing“clearing, open ground”(measured from records)
- Old Englishlēah“clearing in a forest”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*lauhaz“meadow”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*lówkos“field“field, meadow”(measured from records)
From Middle English legh, lege, lei (“clearing, open ground”) from Old English lēah (“clearing in a forest”) from Proto-Germanic *lauhaz (“meadow”), from Proto-Indo-European *lówkos (“field, meadow”). Akin to Old Frisian lāch (“meadow”), Old Saxon lōh (“forest, grove”) (Middle Dutch loo (“forest, thicket”); Dutch -lo (“used in placenames”)), Old High German lōh (“covered clearing, low bushes”), Old Norse lō (“clearing, meadow”). More at Waterloo.
Cited for this meaning 7
- A concise dictionary of first names
- A dictionary of surnames
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Lèigh 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #436 | 38,258 | 1 in 8.7K | 35K | Leigh | 548 |
| GB United Kingdom | #333 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | 88 | Leigh | 315 |
| AU Australia | #240 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 79 | Leigh | 261 |
| ZA South Africa | #676 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Leigh | 118 |
| CA Canada | #529 | ≈7,700 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | 8 | Leigh | 227 |
| NZ New Zealand | #231 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | 13 | Leigh | 148 |
| AL Albania | — | 1,760as Rei | 1 in 1.7K | 1.7K | Leigh | 11 |
| IE Ireland | #267 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Leigh | 89 |
38,258 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lèigh mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English legh, lege, lei (“clearing, open ground”) from Old English lēah (“clearing in a forest”) from Proto-Germanic *lauhaz (“meadow”), from Proto-Indo-European *lówkos (“field, meadow”).… Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and A dictionary of surnames and 5 other sources.
- Which countries have the most people named Lèigh?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 38 thousand people named Lèigh, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leigh. After it come United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Lèigh?
- In the United States, the national register counted 38,258 people named Lèigh in 2020, about 1 in 8.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Lèigh compared with other names?
- In the United States, Lèigh is the 436th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lèigh?
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/l%C3%A8ighThe 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, “Lèigh” — ranked 1080th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.