Lieven
given name · Latin script
Meaning: to love
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 15 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈlivə(n)/(recorded in a dictionary) Dutch · from Wiktionary
Lieven is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 35K(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 1.3M
- PLPoland1 in 5.5M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 23 (measured from records)
- 1 in 35K (inferred from the name graph)
500 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)to love
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Lieven 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.
500 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20). 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)- Lieven van Lathemb. 1438BE15th century Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator (c.1438-1493)
- Lieven de Keyb. 1560BEFlemish architect active in the Dutch Republic
- Lieven Bauwensb. 1769FRengineer, entrepreneur, industrial spy (1769-1822)
- Lieven Gevaertb. 1868BEindustrialist (1868–1935)
- Lieven Ferdinand de Beaufortb. 1879NLDutch zoologist (1879-1968)
- Lieven Annemansb. 1964BEBelgian university teacher
- Lieven Vandenbergheb. 1964BEmathematician and electrical engineer
- Lieven Boeveb. 1966BEBelgian theologian
- Lieven Debrauwerb. 1969BEBelgian film director
- Lieven Scheireb. 1981BEBelgian (Flemish) comedian, television figure and science communicator
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 109 | #17,789 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 32 | #142,633 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 14 | #58,388 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5 | #53,163 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #358,841 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Lieven mean, and where does it come from?
- to love Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Lieven?
- In Dutch /ˈlivə(n)/ (Wiktionary).
- Is Lieven a male or female name?
- Lieven is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
- In which country does Lieven have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 500 people named Lieven, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Lieven most common?
- Lieven is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 35 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Lieven?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 500 people named Lieven, about 1 in 35 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lieven?
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/lievenThe 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, “Lieven”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.