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Leighton vs Leilah

American parents have registered 21,823 Leightons since 1880, against 4,241 Leilahs. Leighton is still ahead, with 1,099 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Leighton Leilah

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 122 years and Leilah for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Leighton Leilah
Total US births 21,8234,241
Most in one year 1,144251
Babies in 2025 1,099125
Estimated living today 20,0004,200
Median age today 912
Peak year 20252010
Best rank 342nd girls1,000th girls
Rank in 2025 342nd1,652nd
First recorded 18931898
Girls / boys 12,412 / 9,4114,241 / 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 Leilahs alive today are over 12; half the Leightons are over 9. That is 3 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 Leighton Leilah
England and Wales 5,340396
Scotland 43211
France 530

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: Leighton and Leilah.