surname lee origin
Origins [edit]. There are several distinct origins of the Lee surname. The most common is derived from Old English lÄah, meaning a meadow or forest clearing. This developed variously into the surnames Lee, Lea, and Leigh.ee is one of the most common Chinese surnames. Lee is also the 22nd-most-common in the United States during the year 2000 census, although this conflates a number of unrelated surnames with the same spelling (see below).