Humanverse

Leigh vs Leighanne

American parents have registered 45,349 Leighs since 1880, against 1,313 Leighannes. Leigh is still ahead, with 31 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leigh against Leighanne, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leigh Leighanne

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

Leigh has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Leigh had 45 and Leighanne had 16.

Side by side

  Leigh Leighanne
Total US births 45,3491,313
Most in one year 1,64148
Babies in 2025 31under 5
Estimated living today 40,0001,300
Median age today 5237
Peak year 19691989
Best rank 201st girls2,408th girls
Rank in 2025 4,460thunranked
First recorded 18821956
Girls / boys 40,242 / 5,1071,313 / 0

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 Leighs alive today are over 52; half the Leighannes are over 37. That is 15 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 Leigh Leighanne
Scotland 2,204117
England and Wales 1,24836
Ireland 6666

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: Leigh and Leighanne.