Lia
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: second-person singular voseo imperative of liar
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lja/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lia is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Israel it is the 18th most common given name.
- BRBrazil1 in 9K(measured from records)
- GEGeorgia1 in 169as ლია
- ILIsrael≈1 in 385as לאה
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 Lia 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #599 (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 570 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
200,964 named Leah, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Leah in US United States, GB United Kingdom, PH Philippines, לאה in IL Israel, RO Romania and Lía in EC Ecuador.
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)
Swahili: "to cry"; also Hebrew/Italian name meaning "dependence."
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lia is read(measured from records)
Lia is one spelling over 5 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.
- Spanish28%
second-person singular voseo imperative of liar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Georgian22%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lia in Georgian.
- English16%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lia in English.
- Indonesian13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lia in Indonesian.
- Portuguese8.1%
first/third-person singular imperfect indicative of ler
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Lia 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #377 | 200,964as Leah | 1 in 1.7K | 201K | Leah | 570 |
| PH Philippines | #174 | ≈91,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 53K | Leah | 155 |
| RO Romania | #76 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 671 | — | לאה | 30 |
| GB United Kingdom | #322 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 480 | Leah | 307 |
| BR Brazil | — | 23,649 | 1 in 9K | 24K | Lia | 154 |
| GE Georgia | #33 | 23,613as ლია | 1 in 169 | 24K | Lia | 64 |
| IL Israel | #18 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 385 | 1.1K | לאה | 86 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 12,927 | 1 in 1.3K | 13K | Lía | 36 |
| FI Finland | — | 11,049as Lea | 1 in 504 | 20K | Lia | 15 |
| HR Croatia | — | 5,344as Lea | 1 in 791 | 7.3K | — | 1 |
200,964 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; CBS Israel — Names given to babies (1949–present); Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INEC — civil registry names; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021). 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)
Lia is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swahili, Swahili: "to cry"; also Hebrew/Italian name meaning "dependence."
as a nameAfrican Names
Italian: of uncertain derivation, probably a short form of Rosalia (see Rosalie). Liadan & Anglicized form of the Irish Gaelic name Liadan, probably a derivative of liath ‘grey’. In Irish legend, Liadan forsook her lover Cuirithir in order to enter a nunnery; both of them died of grief.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
occupational name for someone who tied up vines, from French Hat, past participle of Her ‘to tie’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
habitational name from any of several farmsteads, so named from the definite singular form of Li 4.
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)
- Corrie ten Boomb. 1892NLnot in their usual nameDutch resistance hero and writer
- Cornelia Boumanb. 1903NLnot in their usual nameDutch tennis player (1903-1998)
- Lia Manoliub. 1932RORomanian athletics competitor (1932-1998)
- Cox Habbemab. 1944NLnot in their usual nameDutch television actor, film actor, theatre director and actor (1944–2016)
- Cornelia Funkeb. 1958DEnot in their usual nameGerman author (born 1958)
- Cornelia Bargmannb. 1961USnot in their usual nameAmerican neurobiologist
- Lia Williamsb. 1964GBBritish actress
- Sandra Romainb. 1978ROnot in their usual nameRomanian pornographic actress
- Cornelia Jakobsb. 1992SEnot in their usual nameSwedish singer and songwriter (1992–)
- Lia McHughb. 2005USAmerican actress (born 2005)
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 123 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 24K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 23K | #952 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 22K | #1,486 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 17K | #1,514 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 13K | #161 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 4.9K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.5K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 1.1K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 650 | #975 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 501 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 230 | #1,486 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 193 | #952 |
Reference works 8
- 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 are other forms of the name Lia?
- In the etymology graph, Leah, Lea and Rosie are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Lia?
- A machine transcription gives /lja/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Lia have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 201 thousand people named Leah, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Lia most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lia is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 1.3 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- Where does the name Lia come from?
- Swahili: "to cry"; also Hebrew/Italian name meaning "dependence." Recorded by African Names.
- Is Lia a male or female name?
- Lia is a female 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 does the name Lia mean?
- In Spanish, second-person singular voseo imperative of liar
- How common is the name Lia?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 23,649 people named Lia in 2022, about 1 in 9.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Lia compared with other names?
- In the United States, Lia is the 377th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lia?
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/liaThe 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, “Lia” — the 377th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.