Ligon

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Ligon is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Réunion it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: nickname from a derivative of Old Polish ligac ‘to lie’ or ‘to kick up a fuss’.

rarermore common
  • RERéunion1 in 124◐
  • PHPhilippines1 in 47K
  • USUnited States1 in 54K

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

≈6.2K ●

across 4 countries

Sources
312 ●

64K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 54K ◐

United States

Meaning & origin●

nickname from a derivative of Old Polish ligac ‘to lie’ or ‘to kick up a fuss’. IJtLIjdJJ-iaThe first known Ligon immigrant to North America, Col. Thomas Lygon or Ligon, came to VA from England in 1640.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Ligon is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—6,14048K rec.1 in 54K6.1KLigon312
PH Philippines—4,9613.9K rec.——Ligon44
GB United Kingdom—1,6781.7K rec.——Ligon18
RE Réunion#21,0324.8K rec.——Ligon1
AU Australia—635646 rec.——Ligon18
CA Canada—586617 rec.——Ligon25
DE Germany—362349 rec.——Ligon35
NZ New Zealand—261275 rec.——Ligon1
RU Russia—194224 rec.——Ligon5
IT Italy—192206 rec.——Ligon8
LB Lebanon—156158 rec.——Ligon1
BR Brazil—144143 rec.——Ligon3

Roughly 6.1K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 54K). 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●

  • English52K76%
  • Spanish4.2K6%
  • 2.2K3%
  • Swahili2K3%
  • French1.8K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English52,07676%
Spanish4,2486%
2,1553%
Swahili1,9983%
French1,8023%

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◐

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

  • Polish surname214 records spelled Ligon2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States

    Also written Ligoń

  • Thai surname140 records spelled Ligon6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Philippines

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written ไล้ก้อน, ไลกอน, Laikon

38 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●

Ligon 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 English, variant of Lygon, name of an aristocratic English family said to be of Norman origin. The name is of unknown etymology. According to Morlet it is a variant of L’Higon, a patronymic from Higon, a southern French variant of Hugo. This seems rather doubtful.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In ang, plural preterite indicative of lēon

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

  • In Esperanto, accusative singular of ligo

    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.

Notable people with this name●

150016001700180019002000Richard Ligon, b. 1585Thomas Watkins Ligon, b. 1810Robert F. Ligon, b. 1823Grover Ligon, b. 1885Désiré Ligon, b. 1931Tom Ligon, b. 1940Jim Ligon, b. 1944Bill Ligon, b. 1952Glenn Ligon, b. 1960Ethan Ligon, b. 1966

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 11 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Ligon
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020106.1K#5,654
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020005.9K#5,446
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020205.7K#5,834
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200819#48,822
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20265—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—5#200,722
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20263—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20243#154,370
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—3#273,678
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement)———

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 10 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Ligon?
We estimate roughly 6.2 thousand people bear Ligon (counting its spellings and scripts) across 4 countries in our records.
In which country does Ligon have the most bearers?
We estimate about 6.1 thousand people bear Ligon in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled ligon.
How common is Ligon compared with other names?
In Réunion, Ligon is the 2nd most common surname of 2,369 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Ligon mean?
Recorded meaning: nickname from a derivative of Old Polish ligac ‘to lie’ or ‘to kick up a fuss’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ligon

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, “Ligon” — the 2nd most common surname in Réunion. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Ligon parses inside a full name →