Lean
loc · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from a medieval nickname for a thin person (Middle English lene ‘lean’); (ii) shortened form of McLean; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Laighin or Ó Liatháin
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/liːn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lean is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 268K(measured from records)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 29K
- DKDenmark1 in 56K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 260 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Le-An in PH Philippines and Léan in ZA South Africa.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) from a medieval nickname for a thin person (Middle English lene ‘lean’); (ii) shortened form of McLean; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Laighin or Ó Liatháin.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lean 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Le-An | 73 |
| US United States | 1,240 | 1 in 268K | 938 | Lean | 260 |
| BR Brazil | 823 | 1 in 257K | 823 | — | 5 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 131K | — | Léan | 27 |
| AR Argentina | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 154K | 31 | — | 2 |
| DK Denmark | 104 | 1 in 56K | 95 | — | — |
| AL Albania | 49 | 1 in 63K | 46 | — | — |
| HR Croatia | 40 | 1 in 106K | 88 | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | 25 | 1 in 84K | 26 | — | 1 |
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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Lean is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from OE 'lean, thin' (Lat macer); also for MACLEAN; first attested Hugo Macer 1208 Cur (O)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
nickname for a thin or lean person, from Middle English lene ‘lean’ (Old English hlane).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Liathain (see Lehane).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, To incline, deviate, or bend, from a vertical position; to be in a position thus inclining or deviating.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, tigbi = digbi,
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Madalin Leanb. 1808GBperson (1808–1871)
- Cecil Leanb. 1878CACanadian-American actor (1878-1935)
- David Leanb. 1908GBBritish filmmaker and editor (1908–1991)
- Lean Nielsenb. 1935DKDanish author and poet
- Bill Leanb. 1941NZNew Zealand Paralympic athlete
- Geoffrey Leanb. 1947British environmental journalist
- Jonathan Leanb. 1952GBDean of St David's
- Judith Leanb. 1953AUAustralian-American solar and climate scientist, Physics Researcher
- Lean Milob. 1975DKDanish politician
- Lean Bergmannb. 1998DEGerman ice hockey player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 64 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 938 | #10,646 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 823 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 769 | #9,473 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 672 | #11,928 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 302 | #10,646 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 95 | #1,479 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 88 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 54 | #9,473 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 47 | — |
| AL Albania | INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts) | — | 46 | #4,337 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 40 | #2,600 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 26 | #3,214 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- What does the name Lean mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from a medieval nickname for a thin person (Middle English lene ‘lean’); (ii) shortened form of McLean; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Laighin or Ó Liatháin. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Lean?
- A machine transcription gives /liːn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lean have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.7 thousand people named Lean in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled Le-An.
- How common is the name Lean?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,240 people named Lean in 2020, about 1 in 268 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lean?
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/leanThe 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, “Lean”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.