Léal

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Léal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: worthy person, from Sp., Port, leal loyal, faithful to obli¬ gations (L legdlis, from lex, gen. legis, law, obligation). Cf. Lawty 1. Cogns.: Eng. (Norman): Leal(e), Lealman. Lean I.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 9.3K(measured from records)
  • UYUruguay1 in 417
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 1K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

35,958 people, 2010

Sources
245 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 417 (inferred from the name graph)

Uruguay

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Leal in US United States, ES Spain, AR Argentina and 1 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)

worthy person, from Sp., Port, leal loyal, faithful to obli¬ gations (L legdlis, from lex, gen. legis, law, obligation). Cf. Lawty 1. Cogns.: Eng. (Norman): Leal(e), Lealman. Lean I. English (chiefly Devon): nickname for a thin or lean person, from ME lene lean, OE hlcene. 2. Irish and Scots: abbreviated form of McLean. 3. Irish: Anglicized form of Gael. O Laighin; see Lane 2- 4. Irish: Anglicized form of Gael. O Liathain; see Lehane. Var.: Leane. (Of 3 and 4): O’Leane.

Sources 7

  • 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
  • Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Léal 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.

Where Léal is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—35,9581 in 9.3K36KLeal146
ES Spain—20,7171 in 2.4K21KLeal45
AR Argentina—17,9421 in 2.5K18KLeal2
UY Uruguay—8,1321 in 4178.1K——
CR Costa Rica—4,9201 in 1K4.9K——
ML Mali#384———Leal1

35,958 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Léal is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname62 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese

    Also written Leal, Леаль, Lëäl, L'Eal, Леал

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Leal

  • English surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Leal, Leal', Lèal, Lëäl, Leäl

  • Swedish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Sweden, Denmark, Spain

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Leal

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Léal under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Léal mean, and where does it come from?
worthy person, from Sp., Port, leal loyal, faithful to obli¬ gations (L legdlis, from lex, gen. legis, law, obligation). Cf. Lawty 1. Cogns.: Eng. (Norman): Leal(e), Lealman. Lean I. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and Dictionary of American Family Names and 5 other sources.
In which country does Léal have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 36 thousand people named Léal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leal.
Where is Léal most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Léal is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 417 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Léal?
In the United States, the national register counted 35,958 people named Léal in 2010, about 1 in 9.3 thousand residents.
How common is Léal compared with other names?
In Mali, Léal is the 384th most common surname of 7,873 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Léal?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%C3%A9al

The 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, “Léal” — the 384th most common surname in Mali. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Léal parses inside a full name →