Lynn
given name · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘person from King’s Lynn’, Norfolk, from a place-name meaning ‘district by the pool’; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Fhloinn or O Fhloinn; (iii) Scottish variant of Lyne; (iv) anglicized from the Jewi
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lynn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 12th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 784(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 840
- CNChina≈1 in 886
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 Lynn 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #84 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 617 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 784 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,600,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Celine in FR France, NO Norway and Lan in VN Vietnam.
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)
(i) ‘person from King’s Lynn’, Norfolk, from a place-name meaning ‘district by the pool’; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Fhloinn or O Fhloinn; (iii) Scottish variant of Lyne; (iv) anglicized from the Jewish surname Linn or Lin, of unknown origin.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lynn 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 | — | ≈1,600,000 est. | ≈1 in 886 | — | Lynn | 140 |
| VN Vietnam | #38 | ≈500,000 est. | ≈1 in 198 | listed | Lan | 217 |
| US United States | #41 | 193,296 | 1 in 1.7K | 164K | Lynn | 617 |
| FR France | #30 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 407 | 239K | Celine | 402 |
| GB United Kingdom | #60 | ≈78,000 est. | ≈1 in 840 | 77 | Lynn | 283 |
| DK Denmark | #363 | 17,062as Line | 1 in 344 | 17K | Lynn | 73 |
| NO Norway | #593 | 10,043as Line | 1 in 544 | 34K | Celine | 65 |
| IE Ireland | #33 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 784 | — | Lynn | 109 |
| SG Singapore | #12 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 984 | — | Lynn | 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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Lynn 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, Modern name; derived from Lynn, possibly 'waterfall', 'dale', or 'valley dweller'.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
1 . Irish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Fhloinn and 6 Fhloinn (see Flynn). 2. Scottish: variant of Lyne 3. 3. English: habitational name from any of several places so called in Norfolk, in particular King’s Lynn, an important center of the medieval wool trade. The place name is probably from an Old Welsh word cognate with Gaelic linn ‘pool’, ‘stream’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Of uncertain origin: possibly an altered short form of Linda, or a derivative of the French name Line, which originated as a short form of various girls’ names ending in this syllable, for example
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A local name for King's Lynn, Norfolk, England.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from King’s Lynn, Norfolk; first attested Ædricus de Lenna 1177 P (Nf)
as a nameA Dictionary of English 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)
- Jeff Goldblumb. 1952USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and musician
- Ginger Lynnb. 1962USAmerican pornographic actress
- Teri Hatcherb. 1964USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Debra Messingb. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1968)
- Jennifer Lopezb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and actress (born 1969)
- Jennifer Connellyb. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1970)
- Michelle Monaghanb. 1976USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Lynn Collinsb. 1977USAmerican actress
- Amy Leeb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer-songwriter and musician (born 1981)
- Jamie Lynn Spearsb. 1991USAmerican actress and singer (born 1991)
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 88 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 164K | #288 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 29K | #288 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 1.6K | #745 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 426 | #2,788 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 69 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 53 | #2,506 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 15 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 12 | #22,712 |
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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- Is Lynn a male or female name?
- Lynn 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 does the name Lynn mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘person from King’s Lynn’, Norfolk, from a place-name meaning ‘district by the pool’; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Fhloinn or O Fhloinn; (iii) Scottish variant of Lyne; (iv) anglicized from the Jewi… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Lynn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.6 million people named Lynn in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lynn.
- How common is the name Lynn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 193,296 people named Lynn in 2020, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Lynn compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Lynn is the 12th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Lynn?
- In the etymology graph, Lindy, Linnie and Lyndi are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Lynn?
- A machine transcription gives /lɪn/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Lynn?
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/lynnThe 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, “Lynn” — the 12th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.