Laye

loc · Latin script

Meaning: variant of Lee

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

Laye is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in France.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance
  • GBUnited Kingdom
  • USUnited States

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

France (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
166 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Laye: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Laye
  1. Hokkien李Lí(inferred from the name graph)via Lee
  2. EnglishLee(inferred from the name graph)via Lee
  3. Korean리李(inferred from the name graph)via Lee

Steps marked ◐ come from the entry for the form named above them, not from this name's own sources.

variant of Lee.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Laye counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Laye is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France—75Laye3
US United States—677Laye166
GB United Kingdom——Laye76
IN India—100—10
ES Spain—45—15
UY Uruguay—35——

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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)

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

  • French surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Portugal

    Also written Layé, Läÿë, Lâÿē, Làye, Läyë

  • Portuguese name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Portugal, Brazil

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Layé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Layé

  • Arabic name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Algeria

    Also written Layé, Layê

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Layé

44 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(measured from records)

Laye is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In pi, inflection of laya (“a brief measure of time”):

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

  • In English, Obsolete spelling of lay.

    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(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Joseph Henry Laye, b. 1849Dilys Laye, b. 1934Laye Banfa Condé, b. 1960Aldric Laye, b. 1967Laye Souleymane Diallo, b. 1983Naby Keïta, b. 1995Issa Diop, b. 1997Issa Laye, b. 1997

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(measured from records)

Attested in 28 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Laye
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020677#35,729
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000652#33,090
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010635#35,447
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1961143—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1951128—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1941121—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1921115—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1971111—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1981107—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1931101—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1901101—
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—100#28,414

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Laye mean, and where does it come from?
variant of Lee. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Laye have the most bearers?
Laye is most frequently recorded in France, where it is most often spelled laye.

What do you want to know about Laye?

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

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/laye

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

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, “Laye”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Laye parses inside a full name →