Linen
org · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Linen is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: From Middle English lynnen, lynen, from Old English līnen (“linen", "made of flax”), from Proto-West Germanic *līnīn (“made of flax”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax”), from Proto-Indo-European *līn.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 45 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
- Middle Englishlynnen(measured from records)
- Old Englishlīnen“linen”(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*līnīn“made of flax”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*līną“flax”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*līno-“flax”(measured from records)
From Middle English lynnen, lynen, from Old English līnen (“linen", "made of flax”), from Proto-West Germanic *līnīn (“made of flax”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax”), from Proto-Indo-European *līno- (“flax”), equivalent to line + -en. Cognate with Latin līnum (“flax”). More at line.
Sources 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- Wiktionary
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Linen counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 936 | — | 45 |
| AR Argentina | — | 2 | — | 4 |
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 2020; RENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror). 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)
- George Linenb. 1802USBritish painter (1802–1888)
- James Linenb. 1808GBpoet (1808-1873)
- James Alexander Linen IIIb. 1912USAmerican magazine publishing executive (1912-1988)
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 8 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 936 | #27,300 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 925 | #26,391 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 837 | #27,176 |
| 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 Linen mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English lynnen, lynen, from Old English līnen (“linen", "made of flax”), from Proto-West Germanic *līnīn (“made of flax”), from Proto-Germanic *līną (“flax”), from Proto-Indo-European *līn… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples) and 1 other source.
- In which country does Linen have the most bearers?
- Linen is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Linen?
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/linenThe 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, “Linen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.