Leonard
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from the male personal name Leonard, of Germanic origin, literally ‘lion-brave’; also a different form of Lennon
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɛnɚd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leonard is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 1.4K
- CACanada≈1 in 1.5K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #595 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 557 (measured from records)
- 1 in 877 (inferred from the name graph)
≈880,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Albania
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from the male personal name Leonard, of Germanic origin, literally ‘lion-brave’; also a different form of Lennon.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leonard 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 | — | ≈880,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Leonard | 34 |
| US United States | #255 | 124,979 | 1 in 2.7K | 125K | Leonard | 557 |
| GB United Kingdom | #273 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Leonard | 284 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | — | Leonard | 85 |
| PH Philippines | #669 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Leonard | 126 |
| CA Canada | #257 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 7 | Leonard | 228 |
| SE Sweden | — | 7,368 | 1 in 1.4K | 7.4K | Leonard | 74 |
| SG Singapore | #162 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Leonard | 129 |
| AL Albania | — | 3,506 | 1 in 877 | 3.5K | — | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | #211 | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Leonard | 84 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-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)
Leonard 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, from OGerman Leonhard ‘lion-bold’; first attested Leonardus de Berhedon’ 1219 Cur (R)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
From an Old French personal name of Germanic origin, derived from Jeon ‘lion’ + hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
adopted as an English equivalent of Gaelic Mac Giolla Fhionain or of Langan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A male given name from the Germanic languages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, < it. Leonardo. 1. Leonardus notar sas din Brasov 1431-1444, apare In doc. rominetti ca. Lenart si Linard (Rel). 2. Numele apare si la romini Linart, stolnic, 1461 (T-Rom) 245 ; 13-14 B 131) ; cf. act. Linaru. 3. Leonard boier mold. (Sd XXII).
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
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)
- Sadi Carnotb. 1796FRnot in their usual nameFrench physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)
- Leonard Bloomfieldb. 1887USAmerican linguist (1887–1949)
- Leonard Bernsteinb. 1918USAmerican conductor and composer (1918–1990)
- Paul Newmanb. 1925USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (1925–2008)
- Leonard Nimoyb. 1931USAmerican actor (1931–2015)
- Leonard Cohenb. 1934CACanadian singer, songwriter and poet (1934–2016)
- Leonard Susskindb. 1940USAmerican physicist
- Timothy Daltonb. 1946GBnot in their usual nameBritish actor of stage, film and television
- Gregg L. Semenzab. 1956USnot in their usual nameAmerican physician and university teacher, Nobel laureate in Medicine, author of many retracted papers
- Oscar Pistoriusb. 1986ZAnot in their usual nameSouth African sprinter and convicted murderer (born 1986)
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 143 sources across 74 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 125K | #454 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 7.4K | #485 |
| AL Albania | INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts) | — | 3.5K | #71 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 1.7K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 438 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 229 | #454 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 203 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 7 | #607 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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
- What does the name Leonard mean, and where does it come from?
- from the male personal name Leonard, of Germanic origin, literally ‘lion-brave’; also a different form of Lennon. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Leonard?
- In the etymology graph, Leonardo, Lenard and Lennart are forms of the same name in other languages; Lenny, Len and Lennie are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Leonard a male or female name?
- Leonard 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 Leonard?
- A machine transcription gives /lɛnɚd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Leonard have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 877 thousand people named Leonard in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leonard.
- Where is Leonard most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Leonard is densest in Albania — about 1 in 877 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Leonard?
- In the United States, the national register counted 124,979 people named Leonard in 2020, about 1 in 2.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Leonard compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Leonard is the 162nd most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Leonard?
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/leonardThe 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, “Leonard” — the 162nd most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.