Liên
given name · Latin script
Meaning: to join, to associate, to unite
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries
/liən˧˧/(recorded in a dictionary) Vietnamese · from Wiktionary
Liên is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the 78th most common given name.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 610(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium≈1 in 2.1K
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 5.9K
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 355 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 606 (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lien in VN Vietnam, US United States, BE Belgium and 4 more.
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)to join, to associate, to unite
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Liên 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #78 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 606 | listed | Lien | 155 |
| US United States | — | 8,235 | 1 in 40K | 7.8K | Lien | 355 |
| BE Belgium | #574 | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 78 | Lien | 96 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Lien | 72 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Lien | 119 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Lien | 32 |
| SE Sweden | — | 259 | 1 in 39K | 259 | Lien | 24 |
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: the vn-kaggle-given register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)Liên is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Vietnamese, Hán-Việt: “liên, hoa sen” hoặc “liền nối”; tên trong bài đặt cho hậu duệ hoàng thân.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In Vietnamese, Hán-Việt: liên, nối/liên tiếp; trong bài đặt tên cho Định Viễn quận vương.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In Vietnamese, Willow
as a nameVietnamese Personal Names (CIA Foreign Names Studies, ch. 37)
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)- Ruan Lianb. 1475not in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 29633
- Xu Lianb. 1787not in their usual nameQing dynasty politician (1787–1862)
- Wu Lien-tehb. 1879MYMalaysian physician (1879–1960)
- Wang LianCNnot in their usual nameChinese Shu Han state official (died c. 223)
- Gao Liannot in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 155199
- Zhang Liannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 225230
- Wang Liannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 336678
- Lin Liannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 321351
- Wang Liannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 210426
- Huang Liannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 321833
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)7 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | Vietnamese given names (Kaggle) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Liên mean, and where does it come from?
- to join, to associate, to unite Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Liên?
- In Vietnamese /liən˧˧/ (Wiktionary).
- Is Liên a male or female name?
- Liên 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.
- In which country does Liên have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 167 thousand people named Liên in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lien.
- How common is the name Liên?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,235 people named Liên in 2020, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Liên compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Liên is the 78th most common given name of 73,918 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Liên?
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/li%C3%AAnThe 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, “Liên” — the 78th most common given name in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.