Lïfe
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lïfe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English lyf, from Old English līf, from Proto-West Germanic *līb, from Proto-Germanic *lībą (“life, body”), from *lībaną (“to remain, stay, be left”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to.
- GHGhana≈1 in 277K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 293K
- USUnited States1 in 562K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 169 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 277K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Life in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IN India and 2 more and Li-Fe in CN China.
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)
- Middle Englishlyf(measured from records)
- Old Englishlīf(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*līb(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*lībą“life“life, body”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic root*lībaną“to remain“to remain, stay, be left”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*leyp-“to stick“to stick, glue”(measured from records)
From Middle English lyf, from Old English līf, from Proto-West Germanic *līb, from Proto-Germanic *lībą (“life, body”), from *lībaną (“to remain, stay, be left”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick, glue”). Cognate with Scots life, leif (“life”), North Frisian liff (“life, limb, person, livelihood”), West Frisian liif (“belly, abdomen”), Dutch lijf (“body”), Low German lif (“body; life, life-force; waist”), German Leib (“body; womb”) and Leben (“life”), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish liv (“life; waist”), Icelandic líf (“life”). Related to belive.
Sources 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lïfe 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | — | Li-Fe | 7 |
| US United States | 592 | 1 in 562K | 645 | Life | 169 |
| IN India | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 3.9M | — | Life | 25 |
| GH Ghana | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 277K | — | Life | 9 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 670K | listed | Life | 52 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 293K | — | Life | 7 |
| FI Finland | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 397K | 10 | — | 1 |
| DK Denmark | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 423K | 4 | — | — |
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; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
- Lïfe Andruszkowb. 1955DKwriter, filmproducer and composer
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 2 sources across 0 countries.
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Lïfe mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English lyf, from Old English līf, from Proto-West Germanic *līb, from Proto-Germanic *lībą (“life, body”), from *lībaną (“to remain, stay, be left”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 1 other source.
- In which country does Lïfe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 thousand people named Lïfe in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled Li-Fe.
- How common is the name Lïfe?
- In the United States, the national register counted 592 people named Lïfe in 2010, about 1 in 562 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lïfe?
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/l%C3%AFfeThe 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, “Lïfe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.