Surname statistics for Lin

There are approximately 11,870 people named Lin in the UK. That makes it the 867th most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 188 are named Lin.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)11870867N/A188
United Kingdom (1881 census)1952327less than 0.0011
Change since 1881+11851+51460+187
Other Countries
United States49360624N/A183
Australia2946527N/A180

Top male forenames

Wei Lin
Jian Lin
Feng Lin
Yu Lin
Bin Lin
Hua Lin
Zhi Lin
Ming Lin
Jie Lin
Xiao Lin
Hui Lin
Hong Lin
Zhong Lin
Jin Lin
Chen Lin
Jing Lin
Wen Lin
Alan Lin
Fu Lin
Guo Lin

Top female forenames

Mei Lin
Fang Lin
Xiu Lin
Xi Lin
Li Lin
Shan Lin
Yan Lin
Qing Lin
Rui Lin
Xiao Lin
Jie Lin
Anna Lin
Lia Lin
Su Lin
Qin Lin
Chun Lin
Ying Lin
Huijie Lin
Yi Lin
Xiyun Lin

Notes

  • Total is the total number of people with that surname.
  • Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
  • Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
  • Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

All of these are approximate figures, and the current figures especially so. The 1881 census figures are correct for what was recorded on the census, but we don't really know how accurate it was. At least, though the 1881 figures won't change, as it's a snapshot of a point in time. The current figures, by contrast, are variable according to births, deaths, migration and marriages, so the values shown here are only a best approximation to whatever was the case when the underlying data was collated and will not be the same as whatever the values are right now.

'N/A' indicates that we don't have data for this name in that country or time (usually because it's quite uncommon there and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one there with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the UK as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.