Li

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Li is a surname 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: habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named Li, from Old Norse hh'd ‘mountain slope’, ‘hillside’.

rarermore common
  • TWTaiwan≈1 in 355(inferred from the name graph)
  • CNChina≈1 in 368
  • AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 180as Leyla

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 Li 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)

≈3,800,000 people, est.

#63 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

9 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
670 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 355 (inferred from the name graph)

Taiwan, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

LeeLatin(measured from records)
ЛейлаCyrillic(measured from records)
ליליHebrew(measured from records)
ไลลาThai(measured from records)
ԼիլիArmenian(measured from records)
ლეილაGeorgian(measured from records)
리리Hangul(measured from records)
ΙιGreek(measured from records)
ለኢላEthiopic(measured from records)

9 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Lee in US United States, GB United Kingdom, MY Malaysia, 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)

habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named Li, from Old Norse hh'd ‘mountain slope’, ‘hillside’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Li 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 Li is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈3,800,000 est.≈1 in 368—Li266
TR Türkiye#56185,230as Leyla1 in 443185KLeyla114
MY Malaysia#19≈180,000 est.≈1 in 1832.9KLee216
US United States#31164,578as Lee1 in 2K696KLee670
GB United Kingdom#38≈150,000 est.≈1 in 4482.2KLee408
TW Taiwan—≈67,000 est.≈1 in 355—Li187
AZ Azerbaijan#2≈57,000 est.≈1 in 1802.4KLeyla79
HK Hong Kong#63≈23,000 est.≈1 in 309—Li183
GE Georgia#4116,232as ლეილა1 in 24616KLeila39

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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Li is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Lì, Lí, Lï, Lǐ, Lī

  • Russian surname82 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, China

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek

    Also written Ли, Лі, Ле, Lee, Leigh

  • Indonesian surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, China, Malaysia, India

    Also written Lï, Lì, Lǐ, Ļï, Lí

  • Japanese surname17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, United States, China, Hong Kong

    Also written Lì, Lí, Lĩ, Ľî, ́li

  • Hungarian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, China, United States, India

    Also written Lí, Lî, ̶l̶i̶, Lį, L-I

  • Arabic surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, China, Algeria

    Also written Lï, Lî, Lí, Lį, Lī

93 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)

Li 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.

  • Chinese from the name of a state of Li (in presentday Shanxi province), which existed during the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 bc). Descendants of the state’s rulers adopted the name of the state as their surname.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • this character for Li is an altered form of 1 above.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, The Chinese mile, a traditional unit of distance equal to 1500 chis or 150 zhangs, now standardized as a half-kilometer (500 meters).

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

  • In Swedish, Li är i svenskan ursprungligen en smekform till exempelvis → Anneli(e) och → Rosalie. Namnelementet -li (-lie) används också som senare led i nyskapade namn som → Novalie och → Tuvalie och i dubbelnamn som Ylva-Li, Tindra-Li, Mona-Li. Namnet Li kan också vara ett kinesiskt förnamn, både manligt och kvinnligt, med olika betydelser, bl.a. ’kraft’, ’logik’, ’skönhet’. Se även → Lee.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In Italian, art. masc. pl. arcaico, corresponde ao port. os.

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

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)

1850190019502000Syngman Rhee, b. 1875Lee Kuan Yew, b. 1923Li Peng, b. 1928Lee Myung-bak, b. 1941Ang Lee, b. 1954Li Keqiang, b. 1955Lee Jae Myung, b. 1963Jet Li, b. 1963Yi So-Yeon, b. 1978Li Na, b. 1982
  • Syngman Rheeb. 1875KRnot in their usual namePresident of South Korea from 1948 to 1960
  • Lee Kuan Yewb. 1923SG1st Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore (1923–2015)
  • Li Pengb. 1928CN4th Premier of the People's Republic of China (1928–2019)
  • Lee Myung-bakb. 1941KRPresident of South Korea from 2008 to 2013
  • Ang Leeb. 1954TWTaiwanese film director, screenwriter and producer (born 1954)
  • Li Keqiangb. 1955CNPremier of the People's Republic of China from 2013 to 2023
  • Lee Jae Myungb. 1963KRPresident of South Korea since 2025
  • Jet Lib. 1963CNChinese-Singaporean martial artist and actor
  • Yi So-Yeonb. 1978KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean astronaut
  • Li Nab. 1982CNChinese tennis player

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 87 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Li
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020166K#154
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010112K#273
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200058K#519
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202011K#1,926
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.5K#1,926

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
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname 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

What does the name Li mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads named Li, from Old Norse hh'd ‘mountain slope’, ‘hillside’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How common is the name Li?
In Türkiye, the national register counted 185,230 people named Leyla in 2025, about 1 in 443 residents.
How common is Li compared with other names?
In Azerbaijan, Li is the 2nd most common given name of 28,848 given names recorded there.
In which country does Li have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 3.8 million people named Li in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled li.

What do you want to know about Li?

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

The 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, “Li” — the 2nd most common given name in Azerbaijan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Li parses inside a full name →