Lee
Lee is a boy's name that peaked in 1951, when it was the 92nd most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 725th. About 163,000 Lees are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 59.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lee boys named Lee
Girls and boys called Lee
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 62,299 girls and 233,627 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 21 to 366.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 295,926
- Estimated living today
- 163,000
- Median age today
- 59
- Peak year
- 1951
- Best rank
- 92nd
- Rank in 2025
- 725th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 62,299 / 233,627
How old the living Lees are
born that year still alive today
Of the 295,926 babies given the name since 1880, about 163,000 are alive — 55 in every hundred. Roughly 6,900 of them are children and 62,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1966 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
From Old English lēa, the dative case of lēah (“meadow”), originally to denote someone who lived near a meadow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lees
- Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015)1st Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore
- Tommy Lee Jones (born 1946)American actor and film director
- Jamie Lee Curtis (born 1958)American actress and author
- Lee Min-ho (born 1987)South Korean actor, singer and model
- Lee Hsien Loong (born 1952)3rd Prime Minister of Singapore from 2004 to 2024
- Lee Myung-bak (born 1941)President of South Korea from 2008 to 2013
- Lee Harvey Oswald (1939–1963)American former marine who assassinated John F. Kennedy
- Lee Marvin (1924–1987)American actor
People named Lee with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lee is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lee is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.2×), Arkansas (2.3×), Louisiana (1.7×), Alabama (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1951
The most popular boys’ names the year Lee peaked:
Lee elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Lee | 7,888 | 64th |
| Scotland boys | Lee | 7,218 | 30th |
| Ireland boys | Lee | 4,159 | 43rd |
| Scotland girls | Lee | 1,475 | 45th |
| New Zealand boys | Lee | 872 | 67th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Lee | 692 | 42nd |
| France boys | Lee | 365 | 3,265th |
| Ireland girls | Lee | 245 | 167th |
| Belgium boys | Lee | 208 | 672nd |
| France girls | Lee | 200 | 1,976th |
| England and Wales girls | Lee | 54 | 1,520th |
| Belgium girls | Lee | 11 | 1,159th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Lee | 3 | 344th |
| Poland boys | Lee | 2 birth registrations | 732nd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Lee: rank by region
In 2025, Lee was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lee | 914 | 5 |
In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lee appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (299th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Lee among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Lee | 36 | 296 |
| Finland girls | Lee | 26 | 169 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Lee lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 217 men called Lee were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Lee | 53 | 0.053 | 1,258 |
| Málaga | Lee | 38 | 0.043 | 1,212 |
| Palmas, Las | Lee | 20 | 0.034 | 2,144 |
| Almería | Lee | 11 | 0.028 | 1,892 |
| Balears, Illes | Lee | 17 | 0.027 | 2,015 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Lee | 13 | 0.024 | 2,834 |
Listed in 8 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 44 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Lee against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.