Leslie
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘person from Leslie’ in the former county of Aberdeenshire, meaning ‘court of hollies’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɛsli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leslie is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- LALaos≈1 in 797(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 988
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #413 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 612 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 797 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Laos, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘person from Leslie’ in the former county of Aberdeenshire, meaning ‘court of hollies’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Leslie, 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)
Leslie 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 | — | ≈1,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Leslie | 70 |
| US United States | #172 | 290,492 | 1 in 1.1K | 238K | Leslie | 612 |
| GB United Kingdom | #190 | ≈60,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 5 | Leslie | 295 |
| PH Philippines | #525 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Leslie | 139 |
| CA Canada | #175 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 988 | 5 | Leslie | 285 |
| LA Laos | #433 | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 797 | — | Leslie | 12 |
| NZ New Zealand | #147 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 1K | 12 | Leslie | 129 |
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; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Leslie 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 the lands of Lesslyn in Garioch; associated with Malcolm son of Bartholf. Robert de Lieslie recorded from 1272.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In French, Scottish surname used as a given name, from a place name of uncertain origin.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Scottish: from an ancient Gaelic surname; used for boy or girl.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, Scottish Gaelic; meadowlands, from a place name
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In the early history of this name, one can see the process of acculturation at work. The lands of Lesslyn in the Garioch district were granted between 1171 and 1199 to the Gaelicnamed Malcolm, son of the Flemish-named Bartholf. The implication is that Bartholf had married a local woman of Celtic ancestry. Robert de Lieslie is recorded from 1272.
as a nameScottish Surnames
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)
- Erik Satieb. 1866FRnot in their usual nameFrench composer and pianist (1866-1925)
- Leslie Howardb. 1893GBBritish actor (1893–1943)
- Bob Hopeb. 1903GBnot in their usual nameAmerican entertainer (1903–2003)
- Gerald Fordb. 1913USnot in their usual namepresident of the United States from 1974 to 1977 (1913–2006)
- Leslie Caronb. 1931FRFrench and American actress and dancer (born 1931)
- Bruce McLarenb. 1937NZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand racecar driver, designer and team owner (1937-1970)
- Howard Shoreb. 1946CAnot in their usual nameCanadian film score composer (born 1946)
- Mark Hughesb. 1963GBnot in their usual nameWelsh football manager
- Leslie Mannb. 1972USAmerican actress
- Leslie Odom Jr.b. 1981USAmerican actor and singer (born 1981)
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 106 sources across 53 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 238K | #179 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 53K | #179 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 393 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 28 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 12 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 5 | #789 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,319 |
Reference works 8
- 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
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 Leslie a male or female name?
- Leslie 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.
- What are other forms of the name Leslie?
- In the etymology graph, Lesly and Lesleigh are forms of the same name in other languages; Lessie is a recorded short or pet form.
- What does the name Leslie mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Leslie’ in the former county of Aberdeenshire, meaning ‘court of hollies’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Leslie?
- A machine transcription gives /lɛsli/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Leslie have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 million people named Leslie in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leslie.
- How common is the name Leslie?
- In the United States, the national register counted 290,492 people named Leslie in 2020, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Leslie compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Leslie is the 147th most common given name of 26,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Leslie?
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/leslieThe 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, “Leslie” — the 147th most common given name in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.