Leif

given name · Danish · Latin script

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

Leif is a given name, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 73rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Danish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Variant spelling of English Leaf or variant Americanization of Swedish Lo(o)f, L6v (see Leaf 3).

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 175◐
  • DKDenmark1 in 515
  • NONorway1 in 535

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈96K ●

across 12 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
301 ●

93K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 175 ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

LeifLatin · Danish●64K records
เลิฟThai · Thai●119 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Love in TH Thailand, LA Laos.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Variant spelling of English Leaf or variant Americanization of Swedish Lo(o)f, L6v (see Leaf 3).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Leif is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#7358,287△10K rec.1 in 17558KLeif122
DK Denmark#9911,400△3.2K rec.1 in 51511KLeif133
NO Norway#14110,2176K rec.1 in 53525KLeif89
US United States—7,64850K rec.1 in 43K84KLeif301
DE Germany—7,0486.1K rec.—1Leif136
FI Finland#6223,009△501 rec.1 in 1.9K4.9KLeif31
TH Thailand—2,9653K rec.—#934,267Love79
PL Poland—2,561△125 rec.1 in 15K2.6KLeif1
CA Canada—2,5141.5K rec.—7Leif70
GB United Kingdom—2,2622.1K rec.—3Leif68
AU Australia—2,0171.8K rec.—3Leif88
PH Philippines—1,752960 rec.——Leif34

Roughly 58K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 175). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Danish64K30%
  • English42K20%
  • Norwegian Bokmål25K12%
  • Finnish22K10%
  • Swedish16K8%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Danish63,51130%
English42,47620%
Norwegian Bokmål24,96212%
Finnish21,86910%
Swedish16,4368%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Leif is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate given name5.4K records spelled Leif2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Norway, Sweden, Canada

    Also written Leïf

  • Russian surname407 records spelled Leif11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, United States, Sweden, Norway

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Лейф, Леиф, Leyf, Lafe, Лэйф

51 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●

Leif 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.

  • from the Old Norse personal name Leifr.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Scandinavian: from Old Norse Leifr , a short form of various compound names containing the second element leifr heir, descendant. Leif Ericsson was a Norse navigator who, in around 1000, discovered the New World. Variant: Norwegian: Leiv .

    as a word

  • In Cebuano, a male given name from the Germanic languages

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Icelandic, remnants, remains, leftovers

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Luxembourgish, body

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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.

Over time●

0100200300192019401960198020002020290 · 2022

Show as table
Leif in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1912–2025
Yearrecords
19127
191313
191414
191521
191617
191717
191818
191920
19206
192113
192214
192312
192411
192515
192616
192710
192814
192915
193010
193114
193212
19337
19348
19357
19368
193713
193813
193919
194016
194113
194218
194317
194413
194517
194620
194721
194823
194938
195040
195121
195234
195346
195446
195544
195644
195758
195848
195961
196078
196177
196277
196386
196480
196583
196672
196796
1968102
1969135
1970157
1971114
1972109
197395
197497
1975109
197690
197782
1978124
1979181
1980169
1981154
1982164
1983136
1984113
1985110
1986113
198797
198894
198981
199087
199197
199279
199375
199484
199581
199689
199781
199891
1999114
2000126
2001120
2002101
2003138
2004114
2005152
2006135
2007128
2008140
2009175
2010176
2011185
2012179
2013195
2014205
2015187
2016214
2017218
2018207
2019205
2020245
2021221
2022290
2023279
2024250
2025257

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 114 years between 1912–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

500100015002000Leif Eriksson, b. 972Leif Erickson, b. 1911Leif Eriksson, b. 1942Leif Segerstam, b. 1944Leif G. W. Persson, b. 1945Leif Davidsen, b. 1950Leif Andrée, b. 1958Leif Garrett, b. 1961Leif Ove Andsnes, b. 1970Enver Gjokaj, b. 1980

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●

Attested in 60 sources across 30 countries.

Official registers attesting Leif
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—58K#62
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202033K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—25K#178
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—11K#60
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202510K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20207.6K#2,933
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—4.9K#611
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—3K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010411#50,771
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000393#50,055
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020382#57,536
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025257—

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 493 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Leif?
We estimate roughly 96 thousand people bear Leif (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Leif have the most bearers?
We estimate about 58 thousand people bear Leif in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled leif.
Where is Leif most common?
Leif is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 175 people carrying it.
How common is Leif compared with other names?
In Sweden, Leif is the 73rd most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
Is Leif a male or female name?
Leif is a male 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.
What does the name Leif mean?
Recorded meaning: Variant spelling of English Leaf or variant Americanization of Swedish Lo(o)f, L6v (see Leaf 3).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/leif

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Leif” — the 73rd most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Leif parses inside a full name →