Lein
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Initialism of Law Enforcement Information Network
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 20 countries · latest register: SSB PxWebApi, 2025
/laɪ̯n/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Lein is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 4.7K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 17K
- ATAustria≈1 in 17Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 246 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Orthographic variation im Auslaut: ss vs. ß nach Konsonant; 12+17 Belege.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lein is read
(measured from records)Lein is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English61%
Initialism of Law Enforcement Information Network.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German22%
Orthographic variation im Auslaut: ss vs. ß nach Konsonant; 12+17 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
from Leine (river name) or from linen-related occupation forms
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
linen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Möglicher Berufsname zu mhd./mnd. līn 'Leinen, Flachs'; Bearer count: 967.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Lein is found
(measured from records)Lein 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Lein | 103 |
| US United States | 1,701 | 1 in 196K | 1.7K | Lein | 246 |
| NO Norway | 1,162 | 1 in 4.7K | 1.2K | Lein | 28 |
| AT Austria | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Lein | 23 |
| CA Canada | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 145K | — | Lein | 41 |
| BE Belgium | 156 | 1 in 75K | 156 | Lein | 16 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | ≈4 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Lein | 1 |
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 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Lein is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, 1 ■ from a short form of the personal name Gelein, from French Ghi(s)lain, a Latinization of a Germanic personal name built on the element gisil ‘pledge’ (see Giesel). 2. German: occupational name for a grower of or dealer in flax, from Middle High German iTn ‘flax’. 3. Norwegian: habitational name from any of several farmsteads in Trpndelag, so named from Old Norse lein ‘slope’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)- Anatoly Leinb. 1931USSoviet-American chess player (1931–2018)
- Gerhard Leinb. 1944DEGerman politician
- Anne Berit Leinb. 1968NONorwegian politician
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)37 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 20 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Lein come from?
- Orthographic variation im Auslaut: ss vs. ß nach Konsonant; 12+17 Belege. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus.
- How do you pronounce Lein?
- In German /laɪ̯n/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Lein mean?
- In English, Initialism of Law Enforcement Information Network.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Lein?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.0 thousand people named Lein in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lein. After it come United States, Norway, Austria and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Lein most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lein is densest in Norway — about 1 in 4.7 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Lein?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,701 people named Lein in 2010, about 1 in 196 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lein?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/leinThe 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, “Lein”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.