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Leela vs Leeland

American parents have registered 4,545 Leelas since 1880, against 3,309 Leelands. Leela is still ahead, with 175 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leela against Leeland, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leela Leeland

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 107 years in which either name was published, Leela for 60 years and Leeland for 47 years. The lead changed hands 16 times.

8 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Leela Leeland
Total US births 4,5453,309
Most in one year 232183
Babies in 2025 17594
Estimated living today 4,5003,000
Median age today 1112
Peak year 20162012
Best rank 1,106th girls1,046th boys
Rank in 2025 1,279th1,728th
First recorded 18981915
Girls / boys 4,545 / 021 / 3,288

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Leela Leeland
England and Wales 1,076126
Scotland 283

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Leela and Leeland.