Lì

given name · Latin script

Meaning: polished, smooth

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

Lì is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Macao it is the 21st most common surname.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 3K(measured from records)
  • FIFinland1 in 2.2K
  • NONorway1 in 3K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

111,786 people, 2010

Sources
78 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Li in US United States, MO Macao.

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)

polished, smooth

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lì 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 Lì is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—111,7861 in 3K166KLi78
ES Spain—11,3521 in 4.4K11K—10
AR Argentina—3,3321 in 14K3.3K—1
FI Finland—2,5751 in 2.2K2.6K—4
PL Poland—2,1111 in 18K1.1K—1
NO Norway—1,8521 in 3K1.9K—11
CR Costa Rica—1,1001 in 4.6K1.1K—1
MO Macao#21———Li4

111,786 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)

Lì is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Arabic surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, China, Algeria

    Also written Li, Lï, Lî, Lí, Lį

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Li, Lí

  • Japanese surname17 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Li, Lí, Lĩ, Ľî, ́li

  • Romanian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in China, United States, United Kingdom, Spain

    Also written Li, Lî, Lï, Lí, Ļï

14 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)

Lì 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 Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 丽

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

  • In Italian, there, in that place

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

  • In Scottish Gaelic, A gloss, a tinge

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

  • In kix, thirsty

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

  • In aiy, water

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

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)

190019502000Wang Li, b. 1900Yao Lee, b. 1922Wang Li, b. 1922Zhang Li, b. 1951Lai-Sang Young, b. 1952Yin Li, b. 1962Yu Lik-wai, b. 1966Gu Li, b. 1983Yi Li, b. 1987Gong Li, b. 1999
  • Wang Lib. 1900CNChinese linguist (1900–1986)
  • Yao Leeb. 1922CNnot in their usual nameChinese singer (1922-2019)
  • Wang Lib. 1922CNChinese politician (1922-1996)
  • Zhang Lib. 1951CNChinese table tennis player
  • Lai-Sang Youngb. 1952USnot in their usual nameAmerican mathematician and academic
  • Yin Lib. 1962CNChinese politician
  • Yu Lik-waib. 1966GBnot in their usual nameHong Kong cinematographer and film director
  • Gu Lib. 1983CNChinese Go player
  • Yi Lib. 1987CNChinese basketball player (born 1987)
  • Gong Lib. 1999CNChinese karateka

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)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Lì under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Lì mean, and where does it come from?
polished, smooth Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Lì a male or female name?
Lì 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.
In which country does Lì have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 112 thousand people named Lì, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled li.
Where is Lì most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lì is densest in Finland — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Lì?
In the United States, the national register counted 111,786 people named Lì in 2010, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
How common is Lì compared with other names?
In Macao, Lì is the 21st most common surname of 436 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lì?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%C3%AC

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, “Lì” — the 21st most common surname in Macao. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lì parses inside a full name →