Lea

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: from one of the many places named Lea, Lee, Leigh, Leighs, or Lye, or 'dweller by the wood or clearing'; OE lēah; first attested Ailric de la Leie 1148–66 NthCh (Nth)

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/leɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Lea is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 67th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance≈1 in 830(inferred from the name graph)
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.4K
  • DEGermany≈1 in 2.3K

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.

France (inferred from the name graph)

≈82,000 people, est.

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
474 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 504 (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

LeaLatin(measured from records)
ԼեաArmenian(measured from records)
ΛεαGreek(measured from records)
ლეაGeorgian(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

from one of the many places named Lea, Lee, Leigh, Leighs, or Lye, or 'dweller by the wood or clearing'; OE lēah; first attested Ailric de la Leie 1148–66 NthCh (Nth)

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Lea is read(measured from records)

Lea is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English42%

    from one of the many places named Lea, Lee, Leigh, Leighs, or Lye, or 'dweller by the wood or clearing'; OE lēah; first attested Ailric de la Leie 1148–66 NthCh (Nth)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

    patronymic from a Germanic personal name formed of the elements Hut ‘people’, ‘tribe’ -t- hardi ‘strong’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    An open field, meadow, pasture.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • French32%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Lea in French.

  • Spanish7.2%

    inflection of leer:

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • German5.5%

    Leah (biblical character)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Lea, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lea 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 Lea is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France#67≈82,000 est.≈1 in 830209KLea358
PH Philippines#416≈77,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Lea135
DE Germany#337≈35,000 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Lea238
US United States#67430,5681 in 11K30KLea474
BR Brazil—12,4491 in 17K16K—2
FI Finland#85311,0491 in 50420KLea27
DK Denmark—7,0411 in 8347K—3
HR Croatia—5,3441 in 7917.3K—4
SI Slovenia—3,8571 in 5453.9K—32

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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)

Lea is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Finnish given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Estonia, United States, Sweden

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Léa, Leä, Lēä, Leà, Lêa

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Léa, Leá, Leã

  • Russian given name152 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Croatia, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian

    Also written Лия, Лія, Лея, Leah, Лиа

  • Danish given name17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, United States, Sweden, Norway

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Léa, Leaa, Leã, Lèâ, Lëa

  • Indonesian given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written Léa, Lèa, Lëä

  • Hungarian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom

    Also written Léa, Lëa, Léà

84 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Lea is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swahili, Kiswahili: to raise a child; also Hebrew 'weary' and Assyrian 'mistress/ruler'.

    as a nameAfrican Names

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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

190019502000Françoise Giroud, b. 1916Lea DeLaria, b. 1958Lea Thompson, b. 1961Léa Drucker, b. 1972Kyrsten Sinema, b. 1976Lara Trump, b. 1982Léa Seydoux, b. 1985Lea Michele, b. 1986Lea Sirk, b. 1989Lea Schüller, b. 1997

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 136 sources across 66 countries.

Official registers attesting Lea
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202030K#1,241
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—20K#120
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—16K#1,617
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202212K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—12K#1,469
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—11K—
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)20217.3K—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—7K#101
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20247K#967
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20215.3K#200
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—3.9K#141
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20253.9K#71

Reference works 9

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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

How do you pronounce Lea?
A machine transcription gives /leɪ/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Lea?
In the etymology graph, Leah, Lia and Leia are forms of the same name in other languages.
Is Lea a male or female name?
Lea is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Lea have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 82 thousand people named Lea in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lea.
Where is Lea most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lea is densest in Finland — about 1 in 504 people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
What does the name Lea mean, and where does it come from?
from one of the many places named Lea, Lee, Leigh, Leighs, or Lye, or 'dweller by the wood or clearing'; OE lēah; first attested Ailric de la Leie 1148–66 NthCh (Nth) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
How common is the name Lea?
In the United States, the national register counted 30,568 people named Lea in 2020, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
How common is Lea compared with other names?
In France, Lea is the 67th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lea?

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

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, “Lea” — the 67th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lea parses inside a full name →