Lee (given name)

Lee is a given name derived from the English surname Lee (which is ultimately from a placename derived from Old English leah "clearing; meadow"). As the surname of Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), the name became popular in the American South after the Civil War, its popularity peaking in 1900 at rank 39 as a masculine name, and in 1955 at rank 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 666 as of 2012 as a masculine name.[1] 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.[2]

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).