Lie
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Indonesian: obsolete spelling of Li, a Chinese Indonesian surname of Hokkien origin
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/lˈi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lie is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 8.5K
- USUnited States1 in 307K
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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 185 (measured from records)
- 1 in 376 (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
v., lie down, ndala, ngata = yata; place to lie down, ndima; to he upon the side, héké
Sources 1
- Vocabulary of the Mende Language
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lie is read(measured from records)
Lie is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 4 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.
- Indonesian33%
obsolete spelling of Li, a Chinese Indonesian surname of Hokkien origin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English23%
v., lie down, ndala, ngata = yata; place to lie down, ndima; to he upon the side, héké
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
To rest in a horizontal position on a surface.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French13%
lees, dregs (of wine, of society)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Norwegian8.9%
from a short form of the saint’s name Odilia, the Latin form of a Germanic name Odela, from dthala ‘paternal inheritance or possession’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Norway this is the most frequent spelling.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Lie 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | #330 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | listed | Lie | 185 |
| NO Norway | — | 14,534 | 1 in 376 | 15K | Lie | 19 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | — | Lie | 44 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 85 | — | 2 |
| US United States | — | 1,083 | 1 in 307K | 1.1K | Lie | 131 |
| HK Hong Kong | #738 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 7K | — | Lie | 23 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Lie | 35 |
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: SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jonas Lieb. 1833NONorwegian novelist (1833–1908)
- Sophus Lieb. 1842NONorwegian mathematician (1842–1899)
- Erik Lieb. 1869NONorwegian writer
- Jonas Lieb. 1880NONorwegian-born American painter (1880-1940)
- Rolf Lieb. 1889NONorwegian gymnast (1889–1959)
- Trygve Lieb. 1896NO1st Secretary-General of the United Nations (1896–1968)
- Haakon Lieb. 1905NONorwegian politician (1905–2009)
- Håkon Wium Lieb. 1965NONorwegian software engineer
- Anders Danielsen Lieb. 1979NONorwegian actor and musician (born 1979)
- Aylar Lieb. 1984IRIranian-Norwegian singer, model, actress and poker 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 52 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 15K | #41 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 7.3K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #23,439 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.1K | #23,472 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 827 | #27,439 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 29 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Lie come from?
- v., lie down, ndala, ngata = yata; place to lie down, ndima; to he upon the side, héké Recorded by Vocabulary of the Mende Language.
- What are other forms of the name Lie?
- In the etymology graph, Lay, Lage and Lye are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Lie?
- A machine transcription gives /lˈi/ (IPA) for Indonesian.
- What does the name Lie mean?
- In Indonesian, obsolete spelling of Li, a Chinese Indonesian surname of Hokkien origin
- In which country does Lie have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 105 thousand people named Lie in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lie.
- Where is Lie most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lie is densest in Norway — about 1 in 376 people — even though Indonesia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Lie?
- In Norway, the national register counted 14,534 people named Lie, about 1 in 376 residents.
- How common is Lie compared with other names?
- In Indonesia, Lie is the 330th most common surname of 451,395 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lie?
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/lieThe 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, “Lie” — the 330th most common surname in Indonesia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.