Lìñ
surname · Latin script
Lìñ is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 59th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle English linnen, from Old English linnan (“to cease from, desist, lose, yield up”), from Proto-Germanic *linnaną (“to turn, move aside, avoid”), from Proto-Indo-European *ley- (“to elude, a.
- CNChina≈1 in 67(inferred from the name graph)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 350
- SGSingapore≈1 in 660
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 Lìñ 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 516 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 67 (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Lin in US United States, AU Australia, MY Malaysia and 4 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 Englishlinnen(measured from records)
- Old Englishlinnan“to cease from“to cease from, desist, lose, yield up”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*linnaną“to turn“to turn, move aside, avoid”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*ley-“to elude“to elude, avoid, shrink from”(measured from records)
From Middle English linnen, from Old English linnan (“to cease from, desist, lose, yield up”), from Proto-Germanic *linnaną (“to turn, move aside, avoid”), from Proto-Indo-European *ley- (“to elude, avoid, shrink from”). Cognate with Danish linne (“to stop, rest”), dialectal Swedish linna (“to pause, rest”), Icelandic linna (“to stop, rest”).
Cited for this meaning 8
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 29 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Lìñ 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | #654 | ≈21,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 67 | — | Lin | 157 |
| US United States | #456 | 79,508 | 1 in 4.2K | 164K | Lin | 516 |
| MY Malaysia | #127 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Lin | 107 |
| HK Hong Kong | #99 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 350 | — | Lin | 122 |
| ES Spain | — | 14,151 | 1 in 3.5K | 14K | Lin | 75 |
| AU Australia | #122 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 104 | Lin | 262 |
| SG Singapore | #59 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 662 | — | Lin | 158 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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 Lìñ mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English linnen, from Old English linnan (“to cease from, desist, lose, yield up”), from Proto-Germanic *linnaną (“to turn, move aside, avoid”), from Proto-Indo-European *ley- (“to elude, a… Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Dictionary of American Family Names and 6 other sources.
- In which country does Lìñ have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 million people named Lìñ in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lin.
- How common is the name Lìñ?
- In the United States, the national register counted 79,508 people named Lìñ in 2010, about 1 in 4.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Lìñ compared with other names?
- In China, Lìñ is the 654th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lìñ?
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%AC%C3%B1The 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, “Lìñ” — the 654th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.