Le
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in French: the (definite article)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Le is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country.
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 3K
- VNVietnam≈1 in 36
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 521 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 36 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,800,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Lê in VN Vietnam, Lë in CM Cameroon and Lé in ZA South Africa.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a royal or aristocratic name, the family name of the Le Dynasty.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Le is read(measured from records)
Le is one spelling over 2 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.
- French37%
the (definite article)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Vietnamese16%
a plant in the rice family, which grows in forests and has a shape similar to bamboo
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Le 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | — | ≈2,800,000 est. | ≈1 in 36 | 127 | Lê | 8 |
| US United States | — | 110,967 | 1 in 3K | 139K | Le | 521 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Lé | 112 |
| FR France | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | 1.1K | Le | 13 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Le | 264 |
| DZ Algeria | #849 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Le | 15 |
| CM Cameroon | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Lë | 14 |
| NO Norway | — | 3,998 | 1 in 1.4K | 4K | — | 67 |
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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Vietnamese Surname Corpus — academic citation compilation. 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)
Le 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.
a royal or aristocratic name, the family name of the Le Dynasty.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
کنتleds GISK
as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
In cdo, a erasping avaricious person to blunder, to do carelessly. “uimannerly, forward in talk. to plunder, (éu-chidng ). to snatch from flames. to snatch away. to plunder. to struggle for precedence. high, broad, spacious, (kuangchiong)
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In cdo, the frying pan into the fire.” lightning conductor. to avoid calamity. to abscond
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
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)
- Li Yuanhongb. 1864CNnot in their usual nameChinese general and politician (1864-1928)
- Lê Duẩnb. 1907VNGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1907-1986)
- Le Duc Thob. 1911VNVietnamese diplomat (1911–1990)
- Le Duc Anhb. 1920VN4th president of Vietnam (1920-2019)
- Le Kha Phieub. 1931VNformer General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1931–2020)
- Jimmy Laib. 1947CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong businessman and activist (born 1947)
- Leon Laib. 1966CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong singer and actor
- Francesca Leb. 1970USAmerican pornographic actress and director
- Cung Leb. 1972VNVietnamese-American martial artist and actor
- Lê Công Vinhb. 1985VNVietnamese professional football 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 73 sources across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 139K | #200 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 111K | #277 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 77K | #368 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 4K | #215 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 1.1K | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Le come from?
- a royal or aristocratic name, the family name of the Le Dynasty. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Le mean?
- In French, the (definite article)
- In which country does Le have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.8 million people named Le in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lê.
- How common is the name Le?
- In the United States, the national register counted 110,967 people named Le in 2010, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Le compared with other names?
- In Algeria, Le is the 849th most common surname of 89,473 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Le?
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/leThe 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, “Le” — the 849th most common surname in Algeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.