The name Leon is derived from the Greek word ‘leon’ meaning ‘lion’. Leo is the Latinized version of this name. Both versions are common in many European languages.
Leon is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Leon isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Leon ranks 239. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 9 were named Leon. In the entire USA, approximately 164,619 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Leon. That is 0.05 % of all living Americans.
The name Leon is derived from the Greek word ‘leon’ meaning ‘lion’. Leo is the Latinized version of this name. Both versions are common in many European languages.
Leon of Sparta... ruled from about 590 BC to 560 BC and is perhaps the earliest known bearer of this name. His grandson is Leonidas, on whose life the film '300' is based.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Leon is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Leon for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Leon is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Leon is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #72 Leon easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1926.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Leon was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 2,368 babies were named Leon in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #158 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2005, when it was only ranked #497 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 470 boys were named Leon.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Leon is one of them. However, Leon is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Mississippi seem to particularly fancy this name – the 4,634 men called Leon who live here are 0,232% of all male residents and push their name up to #91 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Mississippi. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 164,619 people with the name Leon. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Leon on position 199 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter L is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 4.1% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters of boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common initials of boys' names.
With four letters, the name Leon is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Thus, it follows that with 4.1% of all boys' names starting with an L, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. Nevertheless, there are boys' names with L that are quite common, the most common in the U.S. at present is Larry.
If your name is Leon and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Leon, you can simply say:
Lion
Elephant
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Leon
Leon
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
L
E
O
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
L
E
O
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Leon sounds like this:
