Holiday Calendar

National Lee Day

Next celebratedMonday, December 21, 2026

National Lee Day is for everyone who carries a name that turns up in families with nothing else in common. Trace your own back a generation, while there is still someone around who remembers how it was spelled.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEDecember 21
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Nothing on record explains the December date.

No founder, sponsoring organisation, or establishing record has been located for the December 21 observance. Behind the Name, which publishes the national name-day calendars, returns no name day for Lee in any country, so the date is not inherited from that tradition. The earliest archived listing of the day found anywhere is an Internet Archive capture from August 2022, which dates the listing rather than the day.

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INTRO

Only one American surname in the top hundred splits three ways

Smith is 68% White. Nguyen is 95% Asian. Of the hundred most common surnames in the United States, all but six have one group holding an outright majority.

Lee is one of the six, and it goes further than the other five. It is the only name in that hundred that is at least 15% White, 15% Black and 15% Asian at the same time. No other has a leading group as small as Lee's 43.9%.

National Lee Day belongs to all of them. It is not Robert E. Lee's birthday, which Alabama keeps as a state holiday on the third Monday in January.

The census counts who carries a name, not where the name came from. For one of those groups there is a paper trail. It begins with a rule that declined to decide anything.

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ORIGINS

Lee Day history

INTRODUCTION

On 7 July 2000 South Korea published a new system for writing Korean in the Roman alphabet. It settled how to spell cities, streets and given names. On surnames it said one thing, and then stopped.

That one thing is short. Chapter 3 states only that the romanization of surnames will be determined separately.

CHAPTER 01

The rule that left one blank

The reason was practical, and the document says so plainly. Applied strictly, the general rule would have produced spellings almost nobody used. A rule like that would simply be ignored.

CHAPTER 02

Two years of meetings, then quiet

Advisory committees met twice in 2000. A public forum, an opinion survey and an expert meeting followed through 2001. The last session sat on 26 September 2002, and no standard came out of any of it.

CHAPTER 03

What people did instead

In 2007 the National Institute of the Korean Language went and looked. Working with the foreign ministry, it analysed how surnames were actually spelled on passports. For the surname 이 it had 9,651 records.

Of those, 9,512 spelled it LEE, or 98.5%. Ninety-nine wrote Yi. Eight other spellings shared what was left.

CHAPTER 04

The objection in the room

When the institute reconvened on 25 June 2009, its draft proposed making Yi the standard. Jeong Gyeong-il of Konyang University put the problem to the room. Even in the presenter's own data, he said, users of the Yi spelling were a mere 1%.

He argued that the standard should recognise Lee and follow the people rather than correct them. What became of the draft is not recorded in the proceedings. When the rule was reissued in 2014, the surname clause came through unchanged.

CHAPTER 05

The minutes stop short of December

National Lee Day has no comparable trail. Korea's argument about how to spell the name is minuted, dated and published. The day set aside for everyone who carries it is not, and nothing records who chose 21 December or who kept it first.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Lee enters the US birth record

The federal birth files open, and Lee is present in the first year for both boys and girls.

The name's American peak

American parents gave the name to 5,448 babies, more than in any other year on record.

Korea writes surnames out

A new romanization system takes effect and says only that surname spellings will be set separately.

The last session on surnames

A language council subcommittee met in September, and no standard followed it.

Passports show what people chose

A government analysis of 9,651 records for the surname found 9,512 of them spelling it LEE.

Lee ranks 19th in America

The census counted 695,657 people with the surname, the 19th most common in the country.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Lee Day

The prescribed spelling almost nobody uses

Applying Korea's general rule to the surname 이 produces a single letter, I. In the government's 9,651-record sample it never reaches the printed breakdown, sitting in a residual group of five records shared among five spellings.

One Korean surname, 69 different spellings

A 1999 government survey found the surname 곽 written 69 different ways in the Roman alphabet. Across the surnames it checked, the average was 13.1 variants each.

Only 15 names have managed 146 straight years

Lee is one of 15 names the US birth record has carried every year since 1880 for both boys and girls. A name only appears once it reaches five births of that sex in a year, so that is at least five of each, annually, for 146 years.

Leigh runs the opposite way

Across the same record the files hold 40,242 girls named Leigh against 5,107 boys. Lee, the same sound, is 21.1% female.

Li topped China's newborn list in 2020

Among the 10.035 million babies registered in China that year, Li was the most common surname, with 726,000.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Lee Day Matters

RECORDS

The surname's unusual mix barely survives into the first name.

The surname's largest group by a clear margin is its Asian bearers. As a given name Lee inverts that, running 73.7% White and 5.0% Asian, so the spread that makes the surname unusual barely reaches the first name.

POLICY

The spelling is the bearer's to choose

No Korean law tells a person surnamed 이 how to write that name in the Roman alphabet, and the rule expressly allows keeping the spelling already in use. That makes a surname's romanization a private decision which a state then prints on every passport.

USAGE

The name changed who it was given to

Since 1880 the US birth record holds 233,627 boys named Lee and 62,299 girls. The girls' share peaked at 30.3% in the 1960s and runs at 6.0% today.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Lee Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Ask the Lees you know where the name came from

The same short name reaches people through different families and different languages. Asking is the fastest way to find out which one you are talking to.

READ

Read Korea's romanization rule for yourself

The clause that leaves surname spelling open is two lines long and still in force. It is worth reading in the original before repeating what it says.

TRACE

Trace your own surname back one generation

Ask the oldest relative you can reach how your family spells its name and whether it was always spelled that way. Write down what they tell you while someone still remembers.

TELL

Tell the December name day apart from the January holiday

Virginia removed Lee-Jackson Day from its list of legal holidays and put Election Day in its place. Knowing which Lee day is which saves a genuine misunderstanding.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Lee Day?

1 / 8

Among the 100 most common US surnames, what is unusual about Lee?

Answer

It comes from the Old English word leah, meaning a clearing or meadow, and began as an English surname. Behind the Name records that it was also taken up as a given name in the American South in honour of Robert E. Lee.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

12sources
9primary records
10independently dated
Primary records
US Census Bureau2020
Frequently Occurring Last Names in the 2020 Census by Race and Hispanic Origin
Every US surname held by 100 or more people, with its rank, its total and the count of bearers in each race and Hispanic-origin category. The file behind Lee's 43.9% Asian, 33.2% White and 15.3% Black shares, and behind the comparison with Smith and Nguyen.
View source
US Census Bureau2010
Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census
The same surname distribution a decade earlier and on a different methodology, used here as an independent control. It ranks Lee 21st and returns the same three-way split.
View source
US Census Bureau2020
Frequently Occurring First Names in the 2020 Census by Race and Hispanic Origin
Lee counted as a given name rather than a surname, with its racial composition. This is the file that shows the surname's unusual spread barely carrying over to the first name.
View source
National Institute of the Korean Language2009-06-25
Forum on preparing a romanization scheme for surnames
The institute's own published proceedings, including why surnames were left out of the 2000 romanization rule, the meetings held between 2000 and 2002 to fill the gap, the 2009 draft proposing Yi and the objections to it, and an appendix giving 9,512 of 9,651 records for the surname spelled LEE.
View source
National Institute of the Korean Language2014-12-05
Romanization of Korean, current official text
The romanization rule as in force, issued as Notice 2014-42, including the Chapter 3 clause stating that surname spellings will be determined separately. It also carries the promulgation dates of the 1984, 2000 and 2014 versions.
View source
Social Security Administration2025
National data on the relative frequency of given names in US births
Every given name reaching five or more births per year and sex, from 1880 through 2025. The source for Lee's presence in all 146 years for both sexes, its 233,627 to 62,299 split, its 1956 peak, and the comparison with Leigh.
View source
Code of Alabama2025
Section 1-3-8, Official State Holidays Enumerated
The statute making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and Robert E. Lee's birthday a single official Alabama state holiday on the third Monday in January.
View source
Mississippi Code 19722025
Section 3-3-7, Legal holidays
Mississippi's list of legal holidays, which places Robert E. Lee's birthday and Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday together on the third Monday of January.
View source
Virginia Law Portal2026-09-01
Section 2.2-3300, Legal holidays
Virginia's complete list of legal holidays as it now stands. It contains no Lee-Jackson Day and lists Election Day in that slot instead.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Lee
The etymology of the English name from Old English leah, its masculine and feminine usage, and the note that it was used as a given name in the American South in honour of Robert E. Lee.
View source
Behind the Name
March 22 Name Days
The full list of names carried on 22 March in each national name-day calendar. It holds Lea and Léa rather than Lee, which is what disposes of the widely repeated March 22 claim.
View source
Xinhua2021-02-08
Ministry of Public Security releases the 2020 national name report
Coverage of the ministry's 2020 name report, giving the top five surnames by registered population and the finding that Li was the most registered surname among that year's 10.035 million newborns.
View source
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