Leif
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Variant spelling of English Leaf or variant Americanization of Swedish Lo(o)f, L6v (see Leaf 3)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lejf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leif is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 78th most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 175(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 515
- NONorway1 in 535
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.
- Sweden (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 351 (measured from records)
- 1 in 175 (inferred from the name graph)
58,287 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
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)
Variant spelling of English Leaf or variant Americanization of Swedish Lo(o)f, L6v (see Leaf 3).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leif 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.
58,287 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); 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); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Leif 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.
from the Old Norse personal name Leifr.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Scandinavian: from Old Norse Leifr , a short form of various compound names containing the second element leifr heir, descendant. Leif Ericsson was a Norse navigator who, in around 1000, discovered the New World. Variant: Norwegian: Leiv .
as a word
In Cebuano, a male given name from the Germanic languages
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Icelandic, remnants, remains, leftovers
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Luxembourgish, body
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)
- Leif Erikssonb. 972GLnorse explorer (c. 970 – c. 1020)
- Leif Ericksonb. 1911USAmerican actor (1911-1986)
- Leif Erikssonb. 1942SESwedish footballer
- Leif Segerstamb. 1944FIFinnish conductor and composer (1944–2024)
- Leif G. W. Perssonb. 1945SESwedish criminologist and writer
- Leif Davidsenb. 1950DKDanish writer
- Leif Andréeb. 1958SESwedish actor
- Leif Garrettb. 1961USAmerican actor and singer
- Leif Ove Andsnesb. 1970NONorwegian pianist (born 1970)
- Enver Gjokajb. 1980USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
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 60 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 58K | #62 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 33K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 25K | #178 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 11K | #60 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 10K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.6K | #2,933 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 4.9K | #306 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 3K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 257 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 56 | #2,933 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 19 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #38,232 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- How do you pronounce Leif?
- A machine transcription gives /lejf/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Leif mean, and where does it come from?
- Variant spelling of English Leaf or variant Americanization of Swedish Lo(o)f, L6v (see Leaf 3). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Leif a male or female name?
- Leif 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.
- What are other forms of the name Leif?
- In the etymology graph, Leiv and Leifur are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Leif have the most bearers?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 58 thousand people named Leif, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leif.
- Where is Leif most common?
- Leif is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 175 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Leif?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 58,287 people named Leif, about 1 in 175 residents.
- How common is Leif compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Leif is the 78th most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Leif?
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/leifThe 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, “Leif” — the 78th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.