Lea

8,351 people in the United States were counted with the surname Lea in the 2020 census, making it the 4,125th most common in the country. That is about one person in 35,800.

By the numbers

People: 8,351
Rank: 4,125th
How common: 1 in 35,800
Per 100,000: 2.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

From Old English lēa, the dative case of lēah (“meadow”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Lea described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 71.7%
Black, not Hispanic 16.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.7%
Hispanic or Latino 4.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 2.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Lea

Nicholas Lea (born 1962)Canadian actor
Henry Charles Lea (1825–1909)American historian
Jim Lea (born 1949)British musician, songwriter
Ruth Lea, Baroness Lea of Lymm (born 1947)British political economist
Penelope Lea (born 2005)youth environmental activist elected as an ambassador in the UNICEF system
Isaac Lea (1792–1886)American geologist and Philadelphia publisher (Carey & Lea)
Princess Léa, Princess Alexandre of Belgium (born 1951)widow of Prince Alexander of Belgium

People named Lea with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Lea

Also a first name

Lea has been given to 34,468 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1970. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.