Lei

Lei is the 3,478th most common surname in the United States, shared by 10,011 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 29,900.

By the numbers

People: 10,011
Rank: 3,478th
How common: 1 in 29,900
Per 100,000: 3.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Chinese

Borrowed from Chinese 雷.

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 94.6%
White, not Hispanic 3.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 1.1%
Hispanic or Latino 0.7%
Black, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.09%

Notable people called Lei

Lei Jun (born 1969)Chinese businessman, cofounder and CEO of Xiaomi
Wu Lei (born 1991)Chinese footballer
Lei Feng (1940–1962)Chinese soldier and communist icon
Lei Tingjie (born 1997)Chinese chess player
Lei Sheng (born 1984)Chinese foil fencer
Kaylani Lei (born 1980)American pornographic actress
Lei Chien-ying (born 1990)Taiwanese archer
Cao Lei (born 1983)weightlifter

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

Surnames like Lei

Also a first name

Lei has been given to 683 American babies as a first name since 1937, peaking in 1960. 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.