Lian

Lian is the 4,201st most common surname in the United States, shared by 8,168 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 36,600.

By the numbers

People: 8,168
Rank: 4,201st
How common: 1 in 36,600
Per 100,000: 2.7

Where the name comes from

As a Norwegian surname, from several farmsteads with the name Li, from Old Norse hlíð (“hillside”).

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 91.6%
White, not Hispanic 5.9%
Hispanic or Latino 1.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 0.6%
Black, not Hispanic 0.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.04%

Notable people called Lian

Lian Po (326 BC–242 BC)military general of Zhao
Lian Junjie (born 2000)Chinese diver
Song Lian (1310–1381)literary and political adviser
Yang Lian (born 1955)杨炼 Chinese poet, born 1955

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

Surnames like Lian

Liang
Liao

Also a first name

Lian has been given to 5,705 American babies as a first name since 1957, peaking in 2025. 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.