Lily

given name · English · Latin script

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

Lily is a given name, most frequently recorded in China, where it is the 5th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: English form from Latin lilium ‘lily’; associated with purity.

rarermore common
  • CNChina1 in 24◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 179
  • AUAustralia1 in 207

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

≈724K ●

across 10 countries

#6 ●

of 21M surnames

9 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
596 ●

31M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 480 ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

LiLatin · English●102M records
ЛилияCyrillic · Russian●2.4M records
ליליHebrew · Hebrew●38K records
ᲚეილაGeorgian · Georgian●35K records
ไลลาThai · Thai●3.9K records
리리Hangul · Korean●303 records
ԼիլիArmenian · Armenian●108 records
ΛιληGreek · Greek●85 records
ለኢላEthiopic · Amharic●27 records

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Lee in US United States, KR South Korea, GB United Kingdom and 7 more, Li in CN China, FR France, ES Spain, Leila in BR Brazil, AR Argentina, GE Georgia and Lili in HU Hungary, PE Peru, MX Mexico.

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●

English form from Latin lilium ‘lily’; associated with purity.

Sources 1

  • Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Lily is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China#5101,219,573153K rec.—listedLi233
RU Russia—2,580,756960K rec.—#48Лилия168
TR Türkiye—1,273,5971.3M rec.—185KLeyla103
UA Ukraine—1,060,6701.1M rec.—listedЛілія64
GB United Kingdom#468749,4161.2M rec.—2.2KLee310
US United States#286693,02322M rec.1 in 480696KLee596
AU Australia#40519,846747K rec.—741Lee332
CA Canada#74253,434496K rec.—102Lee275
HU Hungary—209,5362.4K rec.—21KLili126
MY Malaysia#115209,005372K rec.—2.9KLee201
DE Germany#272125,300170K rec.—10Lee200
GE Georgia—117,12435K rec.—16KLeila39

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

Languages●

  • English466K50%
  • French120K13%
  • Spanish117K13%
  • Indonesian21K2%
  • Chinese20K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English465,65350%
French120,00513%
Spanish116,61613%
Indonesian21,3272%
Chinese19,6742%

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◐

Lily is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name148K records spelled Lily27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, United States, Mexico, Philippines

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Lïly, Lîly, Lïlÿ, Lilý, Lily'

  • French given name125K records spelled Lily3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Canada

    Also written Lïlÿ

  • Indonesian given name31K records spelled Lily3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, United States, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Lily

  • Hindi given name22K records spelled Lily29 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Bangladesh

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Sinhala

    Also written Lili, Lilly, লিলি, Lillie, Lilley

  • Finnish given name7.0K records spelled Lily7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Estonia, Hungary

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian

    Also written Lįlÿ, Lilŷ, Líly, Lìly

66 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●

Lily 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.

  • In French, English form from the flower name lily, ultimately from Latin lilium.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In English, Plant name from the Latin word for the flower.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • From the vocabulary word for the flower (via Old French, from Latin Jilium), regarded in Christian imagery as a symbol of purity. Variant: Lillie (borne, for example, by the actress Lillie Langtry (1853-1929), friend of King Edward VI).

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, Any of several flowers in the genus Lilium of the family Liliaceae, which includes a great many ornamental species.

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

  • In French, Diminutif de Louise; origine germanique, « victoire glorieuse ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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●

02.5K5K7.5K10K1900195020008.2K · 2011

Show as table
Lily in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188041
188146
188263
188362
188460
188588
188675
188759
1888102
188984
189096
189173
189298
189383
1894108
1895101
1896100
1897113
189892
1899115
1900126
190189
190299
190395
1904105
1905134
190682
1907104
1908102
1909109
1910154
1911130
1912245
1913212
1914252
1915343
1916373
1917330
1918388
1919368
1920386
1921407
1922418
1923418
1924409
1925362
1926344
1927366
1928345
1929302
1930305
1931268
1932245
1933242
1934216
1935210
1936202
1937178
1938195
1939168
1940186
1941166
1942173
1943160
1944154
1945142
1946122
1947138
1948139
1949131
1950135
1951135
1952133
1953130
1954144
1955165
1956159
1957149
1958149
1959127
1960127
1961128
1962120
1963123
1964133
196594
1966112
196796
196899
1969116
1970125
1971124
1972139
1973102
1974107
1975122
1976133
1977107
1978111
1979150
1980187
1981223
1982208
1983206
1984223
1985243
1986292
1987309
1988400
1989417
1990396
1991474
1992523
1993557
1994648
1995853
19961,091
19971,355
19981,752
19992,123
20002,733
20013,197
20023,834
20034,434
20045,402
20056,090
20066,768
20077,499
20088,128
20098,101
20107,992
20118,192
20127,970
20137,004
20146,789
20156,683
20166,610
20175,862
20185,753
20195,461
20205,258
20215,632
20226,012
20236,176
20246,121
20256,673

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Lily Pons, b. 1898Lily Tomlin, b. 1939Lily Allen, b. 1985Lily Aldridge, b. 1985Lily Donaldson, b. 1987Lily Cole, b. 1987Lily Collins, b. 1989Lily James, b. 1989Lily Carter, b. 1990Lily Sullivan, b. 1993

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 110 sources across 60 countries.

Official registers attesting Lily
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020155K#360
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202424K#76
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20256.7K—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—6.4K#528
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20202.9K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—2.7K#900
GB United KingdomONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024)20242.2K#3
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—2.1K#239
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—1.6K#1,529
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—1.6K#406
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20261.6K#406
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—1.2K#1,427

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 1,394 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lily?
We estimate roughly 724 thousand people bear Lily (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Lily have the most bearers?
Lily is most frequently recorded in China, where it is most often spelled li.
How common is Lily compared with other names?
In China, Lily is the 5th most common surname of 134,008 surnames recorded there.
Is Lily a male or female name?
Lily 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.
What does the name Lily mean?
Recorded meaning: English form from Latin lilium ‘lily’; associated with purity.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lily

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, “Lily” — the 5th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Lily parses inside a full name →