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Leiah vs Leighton

American parents have registered 21,823 Leightons since 1880, against 1,438 Leiahs. Leighton is still ahead, with 1,099 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leiah against Leighton, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leiah 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

Leighton has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1893 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1980, when Leiah had 14 and Leighton had 41.

Side by side

  Leiah Leighton
Total US births 1,43821,823
Most in one year 781,144
Babies in 2025 331,099
Estimated living today 1,40020,000
Median age today 139
Peak year 20122025
Best rank 2,373rd girls342nd girls
Rank in 2025 4,265th342nd
First recorded 19631893
Girls / boys 1,438 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Leiahs alive today are over 13; half the Leightons are over 9. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Leiah Leighton
England and Wales 595,340
Scotland 3432
France 10 Leïah5

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: Leiah and Leighton.