Lem
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a short form of the personal name Lambrecht or Lempert (see Lambert)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɫɛm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lem is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 287K(measured from records)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 38K
- NONorway1 in 43K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 233 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)
1,161 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a short form of the personal name Lambrecht or Lempert (see Lambert).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lem 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,161 | 1 in 287K | 1.2K | Lem | 233 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Lem | 29 |
| FR France | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 102K | 11 | — | 3 |
| CA Canada | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 81K | — | Lem | 103 |
| NL Netherlands | 382 | 1 in 45K | 382 | Lem | 45 |
| NO Norway | 126 | 1 in 43K | 126 | — | 10 |
| SG Singapore | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Lem | 24 |
1,161 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Lem 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 English, Originally Lunar Excursion Module, latterly Lunar Module.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Patronymischer Familienname zu Lambert; Graubünden, teils als Kurzform von Wilhelm erklärt.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
probably a variant of Limm (see Lum).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In sit-pro, soft, smooth
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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)
- Peter Mandrup Lemb. 1758Danish violin virtuoso (1758–1828)
- Samuel Lemb. 1879UA(1879-1954)
- Hans Lemb. 1888NOgymnast (1888-1962)
- Stanisław Lemb. 1921PLPolish science fiction author, philosopher and futurologist, studied medical doctor (1921–2006)
- Barbara Lemb. 1930PLPolish radiologist (1930-2016)
- Steinar Lemb. 1951NONorwegian environmentalist and author (1951–2009)
- Anton van der Lemb. 1954NLDutch historian and curator
- Tomasz Lemb. 1968PLPolish physicist, biographer and translator
- Gunn Hild Lemb. 1975NONorwegian writer
- Éric LemEric Lem
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)
Attested in 44 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #22,216 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #22,971 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #22,706 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 382 | #5,261 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 126 | #12,361 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 11 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Lem mean, and where does it come from?
- from a short form of the personal name Lambrecht or Lempert (see Lambert). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Lem?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫɛm/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lem have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Lem, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lem.
- How common is the name Lem?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,161 people named Lem in 2010, about 1 in 287 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Lem?
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/lemThe 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, “Lem”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.