Léigh
surname · Latin script
Léigh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Kazakhstan it is the 34th most common surname. 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”)..
- USUnited States1 in 480as Lee(measured from records)
- KGKyrgyzstan≈1 in 2.5Kas Ли
- UZUzbekistan≈1 in 4.4Kas Ли
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 Léigh itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 165 (measured from records)
- 1 in 480 (inferred from the name graph)
693,023 named Lee, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States, as Lee
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ли in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, CN China and 2 more, Lee in US United States, ES Spain and Элисабет in FI Finland, NO Norway.
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.
Sources 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 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Léigh 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 | — | 693,023as Lee | 1 in 480 | 696K | Lee | 109 |
| RU Russia | #617 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Ли | 165 |
| ES Spain | — | 11,352as Li | 1 in 4.4K | 11K | Lee | 8 |
| UZ Uzbekistan | #317 | ≈6,900 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | — | Ли | 25 |
| CN China | #829 | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 298K | — | Ли | 24 |
| FI Finland | — | 2,575as Li | 1 in 2.2K | 2.6K | Элисабет | 5 |
| KG Kyrgyzstan | #222 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Ли | 17 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,852as Li | 1 in 3K | 1.9K | Элисабет | 3 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | #34 | 972as Ли | 1 in 20K | 991 | Ли | 51 |
| GY Guyana | — | 271as Lee | 1 in 2.8K | 271 | — | — |
693,023 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; 2021 National Population Census — popular surnames of Kazakhs, by region of residence; 2021 National Population Census — popular surnames of Russians, by region of residence; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 Léigh 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.
- In which country does Léigh have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 693 thousand people named Lee, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Léigh most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Léigh itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is United States's: the national register counts about 1 in 480 people named Lee.
- How common is the name Léigh?
- In the United States, the national register counted 693,023 people named Lee in 2010, about 1 in 480 residents.
- How common is Léigh compared with other names?
- In Kazakhstan, Léigh is the 34th most common surname of 962,639 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Léigh?
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%A9ighThe 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, “Léigh” — the 34th most common surname in Kazakhstan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.