Léon
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Leon (a historic region of Brittany, in northwestern France)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/leɔ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Léon 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.
- ECEcuador1 in 177(measured from records)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 260
- PEPeru≈1 in 306
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 Léon 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 177 (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Leon in PE Peru, PH Philippines, VE Venezuela and 2 more and Leo in NO Norway, CN China.
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)
Leon (a historic region of Brittany, in northwestern France)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Léon 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 | 95,574 | 1 in 177 | 96K | Leon | 102 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 20,674 | 1 in 247 | 21K | — | 110 |
| NO Norway | — | 12,712as Lien | 1 in 430 | 17K | Leo | 61 |
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; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Léon is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Vietnamese, Tên gốc Hy Lạp/Latinh, nghĩa là “sư tử”; lễ 10/11.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In French, Origine latine, du latin leo « lion ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Alternative form of Leon, region of Brittany.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
French form of LEO .
as a word
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 Ib. 401ROnot in their usual nameEastern Roman emperor from 457 to 474
- Leo VI the Wiseb. 866TRnot in their usual nameByzantine Emperor
- Léon Foucaultb. 1819FRFrench physicist (1819–1868)
- Léon Bonnatb. 1833FRFrench painter and educator (1833–1922)
- Léon Walrasb. 1834FRFrench mathematical economist (*1834 – †1910)
- Léon Bourgeoisb. 1851FRFrench statesman (1851-1925)
- Jean Jaurèsb. 1859FRnot in their usual nameFrench / Occitan socialist leader (1859-1914)
- Léon Blumb. 1872FRFrench politician (1872–1950)
- Léon Jouhauxb. 1879FRFrench trade unionist (1879–1954)
- Léon Degrelleb. 1906BEBelgian journalist, politician, SS soldier, fugitive (1906-1994)
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 40 sources across 26 countries.
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Léon a male or female name?
- Léon 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.
- How do you pronounce Léon?
- A machine transcription gives /leɔ̃/ (IPA) for French.
- What are other forms of the name Léon?
- In the etymology graph, Leo, Leonel and Leoncio are forms of the same name in other languages; Lionel is a recorded short or pet form.
- What does the name Léon mean, and where does it come from?
- Leon (a historic region of Brittany, in northwestern France) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Léon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 168 thousand people named Léon in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leon.
- Where is Léon most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Léon is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 177 people — even though Philippines holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Léon?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 95,574 people named Léon in 2024, about 1 in 177 residents.
- How common is Léon compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Léon is the 17th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Léon?
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/l%C3%A9onThe 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, “Léon” — the 17th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.