Leier
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from the musical instrument name Leier; also from local names/field names with Ley-/Lei- 'rock, stone, slate'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɫaɪɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leier is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 144K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 164K
- CZCzechia1 in 195K
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)
- Sources
- 21 (measured from records)
- 1 in 144K (inferred from the name graph)
689 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from the musical instrument name Leier; also from local names/field names with Ley-/Lei- 'rock, stone, slate'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 30 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leier 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.
689 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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); MVČR — living population register 2017; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Leier 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 German, from the Germanic stem/leisure forms or from the instrument name 'lyre'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
habitational name from any of several places named with Middle Low German leie ‘rock’, or a topographic name for someone living near a rock or in a rocky area.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, lyre (ancient Greek lute)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, present of leie
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Afrikaans, leader
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Augusto Klinke Leierb. 1870CZRoman Catholic bishop
- Edward Leierb. 1927CAPolish ice hockey player
- Mark Leierb. 1956CACanadian historian
- Rhiannon Leierb. 1977CACanadian swimmer, Olympic athlete
- Taylor Leierb. 1994CACanadian ice hockey player
- Linda LeierDEGerman association football 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 17 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 783 | #31,657 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 701 | #31,271 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 689 | #33,196 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 107 | #60,224 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 55 | #27,152 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 54 | #10,305 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 38 | #30,496 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 34 | #31,532 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 30 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 30 | #70,182 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 18 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 18 | #95,787 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Leier mean, and where does it come from?
- from the musical instrument name Leier; also from local names/field names with Ley-/Lei- 'rock, stone, slate' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Leier?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫaɪɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Leier have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 689 people named Leier, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leier.
- Where is Leier most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Leier is densest in Norway — about 1 in 144 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Leier?
- In the United States, the national register counted 689 people named Leier in 2010, about 1 in 483 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Leier?
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/leierThe 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, “Leier”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.