Lee (given name)

Lee is a unisex given name from the English word 'lee'. It is also used as a surname, often confused with the Old English surname and given name leah ("clearing; meadow"), which evolved to 'leigh' in Middle English, and present-day 'lea' with the same meaning. According to the Social Security Administration's popular baby name database, its popularity peaked in the United States in the early 1900s ranking 39 as a masculine name, and in 1955 ranking 182 as a feminine name. The name's popularity declined steadily in the second half of the 20th century, falling below rank 1000 by 1991 as a feminine name, and to 698 as of 2021 as a masculine name. In the later 20th century, it also gained some popularity in the United Kingdom, peaking among the 20 most popular boys' names during the 1970s to 1980s, but it had fallen out of the top 100 by 2001. Lee is also a hypocoristic form of the given names Ashley, Beverly, Kimberley, Leona, and Leslie (all of which are also derived from English placenames containing -leah as a second element; with the possible exception of Leslie, which may be an anglicization of a Gaelic placename).