Lï

given name · Latin script

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

Lï is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: An early romanization of Chinese Mandarin 里 (lǐ). As a Korean unit, via the Yale romanization of Korean 리 (ri), from the Chinese distance.

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

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.

United States (measured from records)

111,786 people, 2010

Sources
85 (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, AE United Arab Emirates.

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)

An early romanization of Chinese Mandarin 里 (lǐ). As a Korean unit, via the Yale romanization of Korean 리 (ri), from the Chinese distance.

Sources 10

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
  • Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
  • Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lï 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 Lï is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—111,7861 in 3K166KLi85
ES Spain—11,3521 in 4.4K11K—11
AR Argentina—3,3321 in 14K3.3K——
FI Finland—2,5751 in 2.2K2.6K—2
PL Poland—2,1111 in 18K1.1K——
NO Norway—1,8521 in 3K1.9K—3
CR Costa Rica—1,1001 in 4.6K1.1K——
AE United Arab Emirates#465≈4 est.≈1 in 2.6M—Li73

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)

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

  • a separate surname19 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Li, Lí, Lǐ, Lî, Lì

  • Romanian surname8 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Li, Lî, Lí, Ļï, Lį

  • Persian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in China, United States, Iran, Canada

    Languages: Persian, Tajik

    Also written Li, Ли, Lí, Ĺî, Lī

  • Japanese surname17 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Li, Lì, Lí, Lĩ, Ľî

  • Indonesian surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, China, Malaysia, India

    Also written Li, Lì, Lǐ, Ļï, Lí

  • Turkish surname11 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen

    Also written Li, Lí, Lî, ̧li, ̇li

10 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

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

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Lï mean, and where does it come from?
An early romanization of Chinese Mandarin 里 (lǐ). As a Korean unit, via the Yale romanization of Korean 리 (ri), from the Chinese distance. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary and 8 other sources.
Is Lï a male or female name?
Lï 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 Lï have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 112 thousand people named Lï, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled li.
Where is Lï most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lï 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 Lï?
In the United States, the national register counted 111,786 people named Lï in 2010, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
How common is Lï compared with other names?
In the United Arab Emirates, Lï is the 465th most common surname of 46,019 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lï?

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

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, “Lï” — the 465th most common surname in United Arab Emirates. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lï parses inside a full name →