Leon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from Leon, a city in northwestern Spain, named with Latin legio, genitive legionis ‘legion’, a division of the Roman army
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/leon/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country, where it is the 17th most common surname.
- ECEcuador1 in 177(measured from records)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 260
- PEPeru≈1 in 306
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 Leon 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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- #231 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 566 (measured from records)
- 1 in 177 (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Leo in NO Norway, 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)
habitational name from Leon, a city in northwestern Spain, named with Latin legio, genitive legionis ‘legion’, a division of the Roman army. In Roman times the city was the garrison of the 7th Legion, known as the Legio Gemina. The city’s name became reduced from Legion(em) to Leon(em), and in this form developed an unetymological association with the word for ‘lion’, Spanish ledn.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leon 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #17 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 651 | listed | Leon | 174 |
| CN China | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Leo | 99 |
| VE Venezuela | #45 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 260 | — | Leon | 119 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Leon | 103 |
| PE Peru | #36 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 306 | — | Leon | 145 |
| EC Ecuador | #7 | 95,574 | 1 in 177 | 96K | Leon | 102 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 20,674 | 1 in 247 | 21K | — | 110 |
| NO Norway | — | 12,712as Lien | 1 in 430 | 17K | Leo | 61 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Leon 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.
nickname for a fierce or brave warrior, from ledn ‘lion’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
$ From Late Latin. See }Leo in main dictionary. Leonardo $ Germanic. See }Leonard in main dictionary.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A male given name from Latin or Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Leon är en fransk och spansk form av → Leo. I äldre tid var det också en smekform till → Leonard (och möjligen → Napoleon). Det har varit ett populärt namn de senaste årtiondena. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 28 september.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In English, I. town, Mexico; pers. name, Spanish
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Abraham Leonb. 1918BEBelgian activist (1918–1944)
- Donna Leonb. 1942USAmerican crime novelist (born 1942)
- Valerie Leonb. 1943GBBritish actress
- Lou Leon Guerrerob. 1950USGuamanian politician
- Kenny Leonb. 1956USAmerican director
- Tony Leonb. 1956ZASouth African politician
- Carlos Leonb. 1966CUCuban-American actor
- John Paul Leonb. 1972USartist
- Faith Leonb. 1985USAmerican pornographic actress
- Lourdes Leonb. 1996USAmerican singer, dancer, and fashion model
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 147 sources across 68 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 96K | #22 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 21K | #102 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 186 | #8,503 |
Reference works 9
- 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
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
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 Leon mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from Leon, a city in northwestern Spain, named with Latin legio, genitive legionis ‘legion’, a division of the Roman army. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Leon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 168 thousand people named Leon in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leon.
- Where is Leon most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Leon is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 177 people — even though Philippines holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Leon?
- In the etymology graph, Lew, Leib and Lio are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Leon?
- A machine transcription gives /leon/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- How common is the name Leon?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 95,574 people named Leon in 2024, about 1 in 177 residents.
- How common is Leon compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Leon is the 17th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Leon?
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/leonThe 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, “Leon” — the 17th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.