Lett
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lett is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from the medieval female personal name Lett, a shortened form of Lettice, or ‘person who farms on clay’.
- GDGrenada1 in 744(measured from records)
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 2.3K
- GYGuyana1 in 44K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 12 (measured from records)
- 1 in 744 (inferred from the name graph)
6,385 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from the medieval female personal name Lett, a shortened form of Lettice, or ‘person who farms on clay’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lett 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 6,385 | 1 in 52K | 6.4K | — | 3 |
| GD Grenada | — | 152 | 1 in 744 | 152 | — | — |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 45 | 1 in 2.3K | 45 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 35 | 1 in 6M | 35 | — | — |
| FI Finland | — | 29 | 1 in 192K | 29 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | — | 17 | 1 in 44K | 17 | — | — |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #622 | — | — | — | Lett | 12 |
6,385 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Lett 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, pet-form of Lettice; first attested Gerardus filius Lete 1208 FF (C)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, from Middle High German lette ‘clay’, ‘clayey soil’, hence a topographic name for someone who farmed on fertile clay soil.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, from a short form of the medieval female personal name Lettice (see Leece 1).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Synonym of Latvian.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, Reaney derives this from the Latin laetitia, joy. The well-known Lett family of Co. Wexford is Cromwellian. Several centuries earlier de Leyt and Leth occur in Carlow and Dublin records, but these are of different origin. MIF
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)
- Carlos Lettb. 1885ARArgentine footballer (1885-1956)
- Sherwood Lettb. 1895CACanadian judge
- Gordon Lettb. 1910GBBritish military personnel
- Céleste Lettb. 1951FRFrench politician
- Dave Vanianb. 1956GBnot in their usual nameBritish singer
- Dan Lettb. 1959CACanadian actor
- Clifford Lettb. 1965USAmerican basketball player
- Leon Lettb. 1968USAmerican football coach
- Robin Lettb. 1986GBEnglish cricketer (born 1986)
- Dane Lettb. 1990NZNew Zealand field hockey 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 24 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.4K | #5,451 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.1K | #5,542 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6K | #5,351 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 152 | #97 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 45 | #217 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 35 | #134,170 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 29 | #39,132 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 17 | #608 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Lett mean, and where does it come from?
- from the medieval female personal name Lett, a shortened form of Lettice, or ‘person who farms on clay’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Lett have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.4 thousand people named Lett, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Lett most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lett is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 744 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Lett?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,385 people named Lett in 2010, about 1 in 52 thousand residents.
- How common is Lett compared with other names?
- In Myanmar (Burma), Lett is the 622nd most common surname of 12,945 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lett?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lettThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Lett” — the 622nd most common surname in Myanmar (Burma). Data snapshot 2026-10-10.