Leone

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Italian: lion

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/leon/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Leone is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ITItaly≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 22K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 22K

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.

Italy (inferred from the name graph)

≈36,000 people, est.

Sources
433 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from a personal name based on a nickname for a fierce or brave warrior, from leone ‘lion’ (Latin leo, genitive leonis).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

How Leone is read(measured from records)

Leone is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English60%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Leone in English.

  • Spanish13%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Leone in Spanish.

  • Italian8.8%

    lion

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    Dal lat. leo ‘leone’; nome usato anche dagli Israeliti. S. Leone I papa, 11 aprile.

    as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani

    Dei tredici papi di questo nome, dei quali cinque canonizzati, il più venerato è S. Leorie Jlagno, che salvò Roma da Attila. 11 aprile. Nome ueato anche dagli Iliraeliti. Derivato Leonzio. Diminutivo Leonello, Lionello (negli Estensi). Cogn. di derivazione evidente Leoni, -netti, Leou- cini, ecc.

    as a nameNomi e Cognomi: Saggio di ricerche etimologiche e storiche

  • French6.0%

    Le leone est l’unité monétaire de la Sierra Leone, État de l’Afrique occidentale.

    as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Leone 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.

Where Leone is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IT Italy—≈36,000 est.≈1 in 1.7K285Leone115
US United States—15,3641 in 22K15KLeone433
BR Brazil—≈8,100 est.≈1 in 26K5.8K—5
AR Argentina—3,6821 in 12K3.7K—4
GB United Kingdom—≈3,000 est.≈1 in 22K—Leone124
CH Switzerland—7711 in 11K771Leone24
NZ New Zealand—≈370 est.≈1 in 13K18Leone40
JM Jamaica#516≈250 est.≈1 in 11K—Leone3

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 — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Leone is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Brazil, United States, Italy

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Leoné, Leône, Lëönë, Lèònè, Leonè

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Leóne, Leonė, Léoné, Leōne, Leoné

  • Arabic surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, Egypt, United States, Algeria

    Also written Léone, Leóne, Lēõnę, Lëónê, Leonè

  • Polish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, United States, Poland, Italy

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Slovak

    Also written Lèone, Leoné, Léone, Léoné

  • Finnish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, Finland, Estonia

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Léone, Lëönë

68 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Leone is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • from a personal name based on a nickname for a fierce or brave warrior, from leone ‘lion’ (Latin leo, genitive leonis).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • From Late Latin. See }Leo in main dictionary.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)

1850190019502000Pietro Leone, b. 1888Giovanni Leone, b. 1908Ignazio Leone, b. 1923Sergio Leone, b. 1929Giuseppina Leone, b. 1934Reina Leone, b. 1974Sunny Leone, b. 1981Damien Leone, b. 1984Miriam Leone, b. 1985Chiara Leone, b. 1998

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)

FormalDear Ms Leone,
InformalHi Leone,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 86 sources across 42 countries.

Official registers attesting Leone
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201015K#2,372
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200015K#2,216
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202015K#2,428
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—3.7K—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024771#1,593

Reference works 8

  • 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)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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

Where does the name Leone come from?
from a personal name based on a nickname for a fierce or brave warrior, from leone ‘lion’ (Latin leo, genitive leonis). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Leone?
A machine transcription gives /leon/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Leone mean?
In Italian, lion
In which country does Leone have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 36 thousand people named Leone in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leone.
How common is the name Leone?
In the United States, the national register counted 15,364 people named Leone in 2010, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
How common is Leone compared with other names?
In Jamaica, Leone is the 516th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Leone?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/leone

The 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, “Leone” — the 516th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Leone parses inside a full name →