Lien
given name · Latin script
Meaning: 2. Dutch: from the Middle Dutch personal name Liedin, a pet form of any of the various Germanic compound names beginning with lend
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ljɛŋ˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lien is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the 78th most common given name.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 705(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium≈1 in 3.3K
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 7.1K
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 355 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 705 (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
2. Dutch: from the Middle Dutch personal name Liedin, a pet form of any of the various Germanic compound names beginning with lend. Hut ‘people’, ‘tribe’, such as Liedwin.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lien 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #78 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 705 | listed | Lien | 155 |
| CN China | — | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Lien | 40 |
| US United States | — | 8,235 | 1 in 40K | 7.8K | Lien | 355 |
| BE Belgium | #574 | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | 78 | Lien | 96 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | — | Lien | 119 |
| CL Chile | — | ≈760 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 1 | Lien | 26 |
| SV El Salvador | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Lien | 3 |
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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021). 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)
Lien 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 Norwegian, habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named with the definite singular form of Li
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A tendon.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian, New England variant spelling of Lyon.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Norwegian, 6. Vietnamese: unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In frm, tie (object used to bind or tie); strap
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)
- Wu Lien-tehb. 1879MYMalaysian physician (1879–1960)
- Lien Deyersb. 1909NLDutch film actress (1909-1982)
- Lien Gisolfb. 1910NLDutch athlete (1910–1993)
- Lien Fang Yub. 1943TWformer Second Lady of Taiwan
- Lien Willaertb. 1976BEBelgian journalist
- Lady Linnb. 1981BEnot in their usual nameBelgian jazz singer
- Lien De Graeveb. 1981BEBelgian actress
- Lien Van de Kelderb. 1982BEBelgian actress
- Lien Huyghebaertb. 1982BEBelgian sprinter
- Lien Mermansb. 1990BEBelgian 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)
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 66 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.8K | #2,807 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 440 | #2,807 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2024 | 12 | #685 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2013 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 5 | — |
| CL Chile | SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021) | 2020 | 1 | — |
| CL Chile | SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021) | 2019 | 1 | — |
Reference works 7
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Lien come from?
- 2. Dutch: from the Middle Dutch personal name Liedin, a pet form of any of the various Germanic compound names beginning with lend. Hut ‘people’, ‘tribe’, such as Liedwin. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Lien?
- A machine transcription gives /ljɛŋ˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- What does the name Lien mean?
- Recorded meaning: 2. Dutch: from the Middle Dutch personal name Liedin, a pet form of any of the various Germanic compound names beginning with lend.
- Is Lien a male or female name?
- Lien 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 Lien?
- In the etymology graph, Carolyn, Carolina and Carla are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Carolien and Paulien.
- In which country does Lien have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 140 thousand people named Lien in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lien.
- How common is the name Lien?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,235 people named Lien in 2020, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Lien compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Lien is the 78th most common given name of 73,918 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lien?
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/lienThe 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, “Lien” — the 78th most common given name in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.