Lija

given name · Latin script

Meaning: harrier (several species of birds of prey from the subfamily Circinae, especially genus Circus)

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ʎɪʒə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Lija is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 18Kas Liza(measured from records)
  • LVLatvia1 in 2.9K
  • BDBangladesh≈1 in 20K

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 Lija 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.

United States (measured from records)

18,271 named Liza, 2020

Sources
89 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Latvia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Liza in SE Sweden and লিজা in BD Bangladesh.

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)

harrier (several species of birds of prey from the subfamily Circinae, especially genus Circus)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lija 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.

Where Lija is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—18,271as Liza1 in 18K18KLija89
BD Bangladesh#798≈8,000 est.≈1 in 20K—লিজা29
BR Brazil—1,764as Liza1 in 120K1.8K——
SE Sweden—1,680as Liza1 in 6.1K1.7KLiza7
AL Albania—1,502as Liza1 in 2K1.5K——
LV Latvia—6441 in 2.9K644Lija10
SI Slovenia—549as Liza1 in 3.8K558—1
HR Croatia—344as Liza1 in 12K344——

18,271 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling liza. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Lija is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian given name152 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Croatia, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian

    Also written Лия, Lea, Лія, Лея, Leah

  • Portuguese given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, India, Latvia

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Lijà, Lijã

  • Finnish given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Estonia, Finland

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian

    Also written Ĺîja

  • Latvian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Latvia, United States, Lithuania, India

    Languages: Latvian, Lithuanian

    Also written Ļija

  • Arabic given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, India

    Also written Lïjã

30 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Lija 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 Latvian, Piekūnveidīgo kārtas vanagu dzimtas ģints ("Circus"), plēsīgs dienas putns ar slaidu ķermeni, garām, tievām kājām, gariem spārniem un asti, ~10 sugu visās pasaules daļās, Latvijā sastopamas 4 sugas

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, upe Francijas dienvidrietumos, Akvitānijas reģionā, Adūras kreisā krasta pieteka, garums ~120 km

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Melno jāņogu šķirne

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Sievietes vārds

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Rāms lietus

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

190019201940196019802000Lija Böhmerová, b. 1916Lija Brīdaka, b. 1932Lija Laizāne, b. 1993

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)

Informalनमस्ते Lija जी,Hi Lija, (English)

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)

Attested in 40 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Lija
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
LV LatviaPMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register)—644—
LV LatviaPMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup)—642#531
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—326#769
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2025314#389
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2024309#393
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2023293#398
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2022282#397
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2021270#403
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2020244#415
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2019232#420
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2018212#436
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2017197#449

Reference works 2

  • 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 Lija mean, and where does it come from?
harrier (several species of birds of prey from the subfamily Circinae, especially genus Circus) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Lija a male or female name?
Lija is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
How do you pronounce Lija?
A machine transcription gives /ʎɪʒə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
What are other forms of the name Lija?
In the etymology graph, Leah is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Lija have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Liza, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Lija most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lija is densest in Latvia — about 1 in 2.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Lija?
In Latvia, the national register counted 644 people named Lija, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
How common is Lija compared with other names?
In Bangladesh, Lija is the 798th most common given name of 29,323 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lija?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lija

The 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, “Lija” — the 798th most common given name in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lija parses inside a full name →