Lee
given name · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘person who lives by a meadow or arable land’; (ii) ‘person from Lee/Lea/Leigh’, from places named by a wood or glade; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Laoidhigh, ‘descendant of Laoidheach’, meaning ‘poe
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/liː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lee is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Azerbaijan it is the 2nd most common given name.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 183(inferred from the name graph)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 309
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 448
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lee itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #63 (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 670 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 183 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,800,000 named Li, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Li in CN China, HK Hong Kong, TW Taiwan, Leyla in TR Türkiye, AZ Azerbaijan and Leila in GE Georgia.
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)
- Irish GaelicÓ(measured from records)
- Chinesecharacter(measured from records)
(i) ‘person who lives by a meadow or arable land’; (ii) ‘person from Lee/Lea/Leigh’, from places named by a wood or glade; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Laoidhigh, ‘descendant of Laoidheach’, meaning ‘poet’; (iv) also Li, from Chinese character interpreted as ‘plum’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lee 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 | — | ≈3,800,000 est. | ≈1 in 368 | — | Li | 266 |
| TR Türkiye | #56 | 185,230as Leyla | 1 in 443 | 185K | Leyla | 114 |
| MY Malaysia | #19 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 183 | 2.9K | Lee | 216 |
| US United States | #31 | 164,578 | 1 in 2K | 696K | Lee | 670 |
| GB United Kingdom | #38 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 448 | 2.2K | Lee | 408 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 355 | — | Li | 187 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | #2 | ≈57,000 est. | ≈1 in 180 | 2.4K | Leyla | 79 |
| HK Hong Kong | #63 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 309 | — | Li | 183 |
| GE Georgia | #41 | 16,232as ლეილა | 1 in 246 | 16K | Leila | 39 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; TÜİK NIP — most used given names; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. 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)
Lee 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 English, O Laoidhigh, 'poetic'; of Tipperary, Galway, Cork and Limerick
as a nameIrish family names
In English, Common American surname used as an Anglicized spelling of Vietnamese Lê.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
,2 Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from any of numerous places so called from Old English /éah ‘wood’, ‘clearing’. It is especially popular now in the United States, where it is sometimes chosen in honour of the great Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807-70). It is also popular in Canada.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, habitational name from any of the many places named with Old English leah ‘wood’, ‘glade’, as for example Lee in Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire, Kent, and Shropshire, and Lea in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, and Wiltshire.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, topographic name for someone who lived near a meadow or a patch of arable land. Middle English lee, lea, from Old English lea, dative case (used after a preposition) of leah, which originally meant ‘wood’ or ‘glade’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Robert Frostb. 1874USnot in their usual nameAmerican poet (1874–1963)
- Lee Grantb. 1927USAmerican actress
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassisb. 1929USnot in their usual nameFirst Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963
- Tommy Lee Jonesb. 1946USAmerican actor and film director (born 1946)
- Robert Zemeckisb. 1952USnot in their usual nameAmerican screenwriter, film producer and director (born 1952)
- Bryan Cranstonb. 1956USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (born 1956)
- Jeremy Rennerb. 1971USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, producer, and musician
- Alyson Hanniganb. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and television presenter (born 1974)
- Jamie Carragherb. 1978GBnot in their usual nameEnglish associiation football player and sportcaster
- Jordan Pickfordb. 1994GBnot in their usual nameEnglish footballer (born 1994)
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 120 sources across 59 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 696K | #19 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 693K | #21 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 606K | #22 |
Reference works 11
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Is Lee a male or female name?
- Lee 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.
- What does the name Lee mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘person who lives by a meadow or arable land’; (ii) ‘person from Lee/Lea/Leigh’, from places named by a wood or glade; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Laoidhigh, ‘descendant of Laoidheach’, meaning ‘poe… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Lee?
- In the etymology graph, Leo is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Lee have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.8 million people named Li in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Lee?
- In the United States, the national register counted 164,578 people named Lee in 2020, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Lee compared with other names?
- In Azerbaijan, Lee is the 2nd most common given name of 28,848 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Lee?
- A machine transcription gives /liː/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Lee?
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/leeThe 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, “Lee” — the 2nd most common given name in Azerbaijan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.