Lees
A surname usually taken from places named Lee, Lea, or Lees, meaning a clearing or meadow.
The #6,214 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 56,115 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Lees is most often a locational surname. It comes from places called Lee, Lea, Leigh, or Lees, which go back to Old English leah, meaning a clearing, meadow, or woodland opening. In some cases the name may point to a specific village or estate rather than the topographic feature itself.
History
The surname is well attested in northern England and appears in older surname collections as a common place-based name. Later writers note examples in Lancashire, Staffordshire, Chester, and Scotland, and the form Lees has remained a familiar variant alongside Lee and Leese. Because many places share the same root, different Lees families may not be related to one another.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Surname dictionaries often treat Lees as one of many names built on the same Old English word that also gave us dozens of English place-names.
From the historical record
“LEER. See Lear. LEES. LEESE. Places in cos. Lan- caster, Stafford, Chester, and an estate at Eccles, CO. Berwick. LEE SON". Perhaps a contraction from Levison. LEET. LEETE. A meeting of cross- roads. Halliw. The origin of Icet as ap- plied to an assembly or convention, as in court-leet, borough-leet, is disputed.…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom