Lees
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lees is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Azerbaijan it is the 2nd most common given name. Recorded meaning: (i) Person who lives by meadows; (ii) person from various places meaning ‘place by the woods’; (iii) from medieval female name Lece, a form of Lettice; (iv) shortened form of Gillies.
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 180as Leyla(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 183as Lee
- GEGeorgia1 in 246as ლეილა
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 Lees 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)
- #63 (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 670 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 180 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,800,000 named Li, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Azerbaijan, est., as Leyla
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Lee in US United States, GB United Kingdom, MY Malaysia, Li in CN China, HK Hong Kong, TW Taiwan, Leyla in TR Türkiye, AZ Azerbaijan and Leila in GE Georgia.
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 who lives by meadows; (ii) person from various places meaning ‘place by the woods’; (iii) from medieval female name Lece, a form of Lettice; (iv) shortened form of Gillies.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lees 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 | — | ≈3,800,000 est. | ≈1 in 368 | — | Li | 266 |
| TR Türkiye | #56 | 185,230as Leyla | 1 in 443 | 185K | Leyla | 114 |
| MY Malaysia | #19 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 183 | 2.9K | Lee | 216 |
| US United States | #31 | 164,578as Lee | 1 in 2K | 696K | Lee | 670 |
| GB United Kingdom | #38 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 448 | 2.2K | Lee | 408 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 355 | — | Li | 187 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | #2 | ≈57,000 est. | ≈1 in 180 | 2.4K | Leyla | 79 |
| HK Hong Kong | #63 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 309 | — | Li | 183 |
| GE Georgia | #41 | 16,232as ლეილა | 1 in 246 | 16K | Leila | 39 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; TÜİK NIP — most used given names; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. 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)
Lees 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, plural of Lea; first attested Roger de Leges, de Lees 1212 Cur (Kent)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
habitational name from Leece or Lees in Lancashire, or Leese in Cheshire, all named from Old English leas ‘woodland clearings’ (plural of leak), or from Leece in Cumbria, which was probably named with a Celtic word, li'ss ‘hall’, ‘court’, ‘the principal house in a district’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
topographic name from Middle English lees ‘fields’, ‘arable land’, plural of lee (see Lee), or from Middle English lese ‘pasture’, ‘meadow’ (Old English las).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, The sediment that settles during fermentation of beverages, consisting of dead yeast and precipitated parts of the fruit.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
4. Scottish: reduced form of Gillies.
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Robert Leesb. 1912USAmerican screenwriter and actor (1912-2004)
- Andrea Leedsb. 1914USnot in their usual nameAmerican film actress (1914-1984)
- Benjamin Leesb. 1924USAmerican composer (1924–2010)
- Gene Leesb. 1928CACanadian music critic, biographer, lyricist, and journalist (1928–2010)
- Geoff Leesb. 1951GBBritish racing driver
- Nathaniel Leesb. 1952NZNew Zealand actor
- Christine Fletcherb. 1955NZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand politician
- Paris Leesb. 1986GBBritish journalist and activist for transgender rights
- Tom Leesb. 1990GBEnglish association football player (born 1990)
- Angus MacDonaldb. 1992GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 1992)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 38 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.5K | #6,214 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.5K | #5,763 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.3K | #6,247 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- What does the name Lees mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Person who lives by meadows; (ii) person from various places meaning ‘place by the woods’; (iii) from medieval female name Lece, a form of Lettice; (iv) shortened form of Gillies. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Lees have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.8 million people named Li in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Lees?
- In Türkiye, the national register counted 185,230 people named Leyla in 2025, about 1 in 443 residents.
- How common is Lees compared with other names?
- In Azerbaijan, Lees is the 2nd most common given name of 28,848 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lees?
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/leesThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Lees” — the 2nd most common given name in Azerbaijan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.