What does li'l mean? Li'l is an abbreviation of the word little. It's often used in names or titles to emphasize youth or physical size.

Lil is for long LITTLE, most of those rappers who called themselves Lil do so when they started rapping at a very young age, when they turned adults it becomes very hard to change their names because the Lil name has been known as their stage names.

The word lil, a shortening of little, first appeared in the 1800s. "It's in the form of a child's nursery rhyme — lil boy bear, lil gal bear," ABC language researcher (and rap fan) Tiger Webb said. "Some of those, honestly, you could transpose to hip hop names right now."