Leppanen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: topographic name from Finnish leppd ‘alder tree’ -i- the common surname suffix -nen
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɫɛpənən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leppanen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country, where it is the 71st most common surname.
- FIFinland1 in 233(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 25K
- EEEstonia≈1 in 44K
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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 99 (measured from records)
- 1 in 233 (inferred from the name graph)
23,872 people
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Leppänen in FI Finland, SE Sweden, EE Estonia.
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)
topographic name from Finnish leppd ‘alder tree’ -i- the common surname suffix -nen. This name is recorded from the 16th century in eastern and western Finland; it was also adopted as an ornamental name during the name conversion movement of the late 19th and early 20 centuries, and is now found chiefly in western Finland. In the U.S. it has sometimes been translated as Alder.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leppanen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | #71 | 23,872 | 1 in 233 | 24K | Leppänen | 59 |
| SE Sweden | — | 407 | 1 in 25K | 407 | Leppänen | 23 |
| US United States | — | 369 | 1 in 901K | 396 | Leppanen | 99 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈87 est. | ≈1 in 436K | — | Leppanen | 16 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈83 est. | ≈1 in 796K | — | Leppanen | 15 |
| PT Portugal | — | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 245K | — | Leppanen | 3 |
| DK Denmark | — | 29 | 1 in 202K | 29 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈28 est. | ≈1 in 44K | 34 | Leppänen | 6 |
23,872 people counted by DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed); 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)
- Analisa Leppanen-Guerrab. 1971USAmerican art historian
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 13 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 396 | #49,767 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 369 | #55,619 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 338 | #63,720 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 22 | #41,520 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #76,608 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1 | #80,027 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Leppanen mean, and where does it come from?
- topographic name from Finnish leppd ‘alder tree’ -i- the common surname suffix -nen. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Leppanen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫɛpənən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Leppanen have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 24 thousand people named Leppanen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leppänen.
- Where is Leppanen most common?
- Leppanen is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 233 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Leppanen?
- In Finland, the national register counted 23,872 people named Leppanen, about 1 in 233 residents.
- How common is Leppanen compared with other names?
- In Finland, Leppanen is the 71st most common surname of 94,499 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Leppanen?
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/leppanenThe 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, “Leppanen” — the 71st most common surname in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.