Chinese surname

Surname Lee

李

Lee is a spelling of the Chinese surname 李, meaning plum.

Characters for the surname Lee

The spelling Lee is common in Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka romanization.

李

plum; surname

Cantonese lei5 / Hokkien lí / Hakka lí / Mandarin lǐ

attested

李 all spellings of lǐ

Possible characters for Lee

In our records the spelling Lee stands for 李.

Character	Mandarin reading · romanization of the spelling
李	lǐ · Hokkien · Cantonese

Other spellings of the same character

Li 李Mandarin (pinyin)

About the surname Lee

Lee is a spelling of the surname 李, meaning plum. It matches the Cantonese reading lei5 and the Hokkien and Hakka reading lí. Wiktionary notes that Lee is more common than Li in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. According to JPN, the surname peaked in the 1940s with 2,908 baby girls.

Lee in official JPN data

1940s: Boy: 2,740 · 16.1% Girl: 2,908 · 15.4%
1950s: Boy: 1,308 · 14.5% Girl: 1,278 · 10%
1960s: not in the top 10
1970s: not in the top 10
1980s: not in the top 10
1990s: Girl: 795 · 7.9%
2000s: not in the top 10
2010s: not in the top 10

People registered with Lee as their first name (as published by JPN), by decade of birth, for the decades in which it was in the top 10 for its sex in the JPN Chinese table. In these records the name JPN publishes is often the surname. Bar length shows the name’s share of that decade’s top-10 total for the sex (the percentage after the count), because those totals differ between decades. Source: JPN via data.gov.my (CC BY 4.0)

Sources

Wiktionary: 李 · en.wiktionary.org · meaning
MDBG: 李 · mdbg.net · meaning

Names are shared across communities. The categories on this site are for browsing only: they describe a name and its spelling, not anyone’s ethnicity, religion or background.

Entry ID: mn00027 · Updated 2026-10-25 · Report a mistake