Lemon
loc · Latin script
Meaning: from the medieval male personal name Lefrnan, from Old English leofman, literally ‘beloved man’; also from a nickname for a sweetheart or lover; or a different form of Lament
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lemon is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 20K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 22K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 22K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 396 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, 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 Lemmon in GB United Kingdom, IT Italy, NZ New Zealand and 1 more.
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)
from the medieval male personal name Lefrnan, from Old English leofman, literally ‘beloved man’; also from a nickname for a sweetheart or lover; or a different form of Lament.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lemon 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 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.9K | — | Lemmon | 13 |
| US United States | 15,140 | 1 in 22K | 15K | Lemon | 396 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Lemmon | 188 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Lemon | 136 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 45K | 2 | Lemmon | 18 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Lemon | 126 |
| SE Sweden | 505 | 1 in 20K | 505 | — | 42 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Lemmon | 50 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend). 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)
Lemon 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, from the Middle English personal name Leftnan, Old English Leofman, composed of the elements /eo/‘dear’, ‘beloved’ -i- mann ‘man’, ‘person’. This came to be used as a nickname for a lover or sweetheart, from Middle English lem(m)an. There is no connection with the word denoting the citrus fruit (which is of Persian origin).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A yellowish citrus fruit.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, dimbele
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In English, variant of Lamont.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Irish, A numerous name in Ulster where it may be of English origin or an abbreviated form of MacLamond. See MacClement
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Richard Landerb. 1804GBnot in their usual nameCornish explorer (1804–1834)
- Mark Lemonb. 1809GBBritish magazine editor (1809–1870)
- Blind Lemon Jeffersonb. 1893USAmerican blues singer and guitarist (1893–1929)
- Bob Lemonb. 1920USAmerican baseball player and coach
- Meadowlark Lemonb. 1932USAmerican basketball player (1932–2015)
- Peter C. Lemonb. 1950CAUnited States Army Medal of Honor recipient
- Ben Lemonb. 1955USAmerican actor
- Genevieve Lemonb. 1960AUAustralian actress
- Don Lemonb. 1966USAmerican journalist and news anchor
- JR Lemonb. 1983USAmerican model and actor
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 33 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,393 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,283 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,487 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 505 | #1,866 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- What does the name Lemon mean, and where does it come from?
- from the medieval male personal name Lefrnan, from Old English leofman, literally ‘beloved man’; also from a nickname for a sweetheart or lover; or a different form of Lament. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Lemon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 156 thousand people named Lemon in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lemmon.
- How common is the name Lemon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,140 people named Lemon in 2010, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lemon?
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/lemonThe 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, “Lemon”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.