Leo
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from OFr Leon, Greek λέων, Latin leo ‘lion’; first attested Leo camerarius 1121–48 Bury (Norfolk)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/liːoʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country, where it is the 17th most common surname.
- ITItaly≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 177as Leon
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 260as Leon
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 Leo 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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- #231 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 566 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 named Leon, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Italy, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Leon in PE Peru, PH Philippines, VE Venezuela and 2 more and Levon in PL Poland.
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 OFr Leon, Greek λέων, Latin leo ‘lion’; first attested Leo camerarius 1121–48 Bury (Norfolk)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leo 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 | #17 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 651 | listed | Leon | 174 |
| CN China | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Leo | 99 |
| VE Venezuela | #45 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 260 | — | Leon | 119 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Leon | 103 |
| PE Peru | #36 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 306 | — | Leon | 145 |
| EC Ecuador | #7 | 95,574as Leon | 1 in 177 | 96K | Leon | 102 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 20,674as Leon | 1 in 247 | 21K | — | 110 |
| IT Italy | #792 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | 285 | Leo | 110 |
| NO Norway | — | 12,712as Lien | 1 in 430 | 17K | Leo | 61 |
| PL Poland | — | 102 | 1 in 375K | 69K | Levon | 5 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend). 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)
Leo 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, originally from ahd. lewen 'be gracious, be favorable', later linked to Lat. leo 'lion'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Irish, Latin name meaning “lion”; adopted in Ireland and translated as Leon.
as a nameIrish first names
In Latin, Latin 'lion'; reference to a name entry in the namebook
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from Latin leo ‘lion’, applied either a nickname for a strong or fearless man or a habitational name for someone living at a house distinguished by the sign of a lion; or alternatively from a personal name of the same derivation.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
From a Late Latin personal name, meaning ‘lion’, which was borne by a large number of early Christian saints, most notably Pope Leo the Great (?390- 461). Variant: Leon (taken from the oblique case).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)
- Leo IIIb. 750ITPope of the Catholic Church from 795 to 816 (born 750–816)
- Leo IVb. 790ITpope of the Catholic Church
- Leo VIIIb. 915ITpope
- Leo XIb. 1535FRpope of the Catholic Church in April 1605 (1535-1605)
- Leo von Caprivib. 1831DEGerman Chancellor and Prussian General of the Infantry and Prime Minister (1831-1899)
- Léon Bourgeoisb. 1851FRFrench statesman (1851-1925)
- Leó Szilárdb. 1898HUHungarian-American Jewish physicist and inventor (1898–1964)
- Leo Esakib. 1925JPJapanese physicist (1925-)
- Tom Clancyb. 1947USnot in their usual nameAmerican author (1947–2013)
- Leo Varadkarb. 1979IETaoiseach from 2017 to 2020, and from 2022 to 2024.
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 159 sources across 79 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 12K | #361 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 6.6K | #210 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5.8K | #218 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 3.6K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 1.5K | #567 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 46 | #12,380 |
Reference works 10
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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
- Is Leo a male or female name?
- Leo is a male 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.
- What are other forms of the name Leo?
- In the etymology graph, Lee, Leonel and Lionel are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Leo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 168 thousand people named Leon in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold.
- What does the name Leo mean, and where does it come from?
- from OFr Leon, Greek λέων, Latin leo ‘lion’; first attested Leo camerarius 1121–48 Bury (Norfolk) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How common is the name Leo?
- In Poland, the national register counted 102 people named Leo in 2026, about 1 in 375 thousand residents.
- How common is Leo compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Leo is the 17th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Leo?
- A machine transcription gives /liːoʊ/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Leo?
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/leoThe 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, “Leo” — the 17th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.