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Leia vs Leighton

American parents have registered 21,823 Leightons since 1880, against 18,778 Leias. Leighton is still ahead, with 1,099 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leia against Leighton, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leia Leighton

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 123 years in which either name was published, Leighton for 101 years and Leia for 22 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

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

Side by side

  Leia Leighton
Total US births 18,77821,823
Most in one year 1,4241,144
Babies in 2025 1,0331,099
Estimated living today 19,00020,000
Median age today 89
Peak year 20232025
Best rank 211th girls342nd girls
Rank in 2025 297th342nd
First recorded 19491893
Girls / boys 18,778 / 012,412 / 9,411

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 Leia Leighton
England and Wales 2,6635,340
France 5,670 Leïa5
Scotland 359432
Ireland 171319
Northern Ireland 6665

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: Leia and Leighton.