Leigh

10,042 people in the United States were counted with the surname Leigh in the 2020 census, making it the 3,468th most common in the country. That is about one person in 29,800.

By the numbers

People: 10,042
Rank: 3,468th
How common: 1 in 29,800
Per 100,000: 3.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

From the nominative case of Old English lēah (“wood, meadow”), 'dweller by the wood or clearing'.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 74.2%
Black, not Hispanic 14.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 4.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 2.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Leigh

Vivien Leigh (1913–1967)British actress
Janet Leigh (1927–2004)American actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh (born 1962)American actress
Chyler Leigh (born 1982)American actress, singer and model
Mike Leigh (born 1943)English writer and director
Cherami Leigh (born 1988)American actress
Suzanna Leigh (1945–2017)British actress
Augusta Leigh (1783–1851)Half-sister of Lord Byron

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

Surnames like Leigh

Also a first name

Leigh has been given to 45,349 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 1969. 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.