Lîe

surname · Latin script

Lîe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English lien, liggen, from Old English liċġan, from Proto-West Germanic *liggjan, from Proto-Germanic *ligjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ-.

rarermore common
  • BEBelgium1 in 378K(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 376
  • DKDenmark1 in 19K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Norway (measured from records)

14,534 people

Sources
150 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 376 (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Lie in NO Norway, BE Belgium, US United States and 1 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)

Derivation of Lîe: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Lîe
  1. Middle Englishlien(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishliċġan(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*liggjan(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*ligjaną(measured from records)
  5. Proto-Indo-European*legʰ-(measured from records)

From Middle English lien, liggen, from Old English liċġan, from Proto-West Germanic *liggjan, from Proto-Germanic *ligjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ-. Cognate with West Frisian lizze, Dutch liggen, German liegen, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ligge, Swedish ligga, Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian Nynorsk liggja, Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌲𐌰𐌽 (ligan); and with Latin lectus (“bed”), Irish luí, Russian лежа́ть (ležátʹ), Albanian lag (“troop, band, encampment”). As a noun for position, the noun has the same etymology above as the verb.

Sources 7

  • A Handbook of African Names
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)

Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lîe 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.

Where Lîe is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NO Norway—14,5341 in 37615KLie18
US United States—1,0831 in 307K1.1KLie27
NL Netherlands—6251 in 28K625Lie8
DK Denmark—3121 in 19K312——
SE Sweden—2581 in 40K258—3
BE Belgium#457311 in 378K31Lie15
FI Finland—291 in 192K45—1

14,534 people counted by SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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: SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Lîe is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, Germany, Malaysia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Lie, Liè, Lîë, Líe, Ľïě

2 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Lîe under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Lîe mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English lien, liggen, from Old English liċġan, from Proto-West Germanic *liggjan, from Proto-Germanic *ligjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ-. Recorded by A Handbook of African Names and Dictionary of American Family Names and 5 other sources.
In which country does Lîe have the most bearers?
In Norway, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Lîe, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lie.
Where is Lîe most common?
Lîe is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 376 people carrying it.
How common is the name Lîe?
In Norway, the national register counted 14,534 people named Lîe, about 1 in 376 residents.
How common is Lîe compared with other names?
In Belgium, Lîe is the 457th most common surname of 246,397 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lîe?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/l%C3%AEe

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; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Lîe” — the 457th most common surname in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lîe parses inside a full name →