Humanverse

Leigh vs Leith

American parents have registered 45,349 Leighs since 1880, against 769 Leiths. Leigh is still ahead, with 31 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Leigh Leith

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 2018, when Leigh had 54 and Leith had 23.

Side by side

  Leigh Leith
Total US births 45,349769
Most in one year 1,64123
Babies in 2025 3110
Estimated living today 40,000670
Median age today 5235
Peak year 19692018
Best rank 201st girls4,354th boys
Rank in 2025 4,460th7,679th
First recorded 18821916
Girls / boys 40,242 / 5,107110 / 659

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 Leiths are over 35. That is 17 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Leigh Leith
Scotland 2,2048
England and Wales 1,24855

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 Leith.