Leigh
Leigh is a girl's name that peaked in 1969, when it was the 201st most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 4,460th. About 40,000 Leighs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Leigh boys named Leigh
Girls and boys called Leigh
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Leigh crossed from boys to girls in 1946, and has stayed there for 80 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 112 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 45,349
- Estimated living today
- 40,000
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1969
- Best rank
- 201st
- Rank in 2025
- 4,460th
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 40,242 / 5,107
How old the living Leighs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 45,349 babies given the name since 1882, about 40,000 are alive — 88 in every hundred. Roughly 950 of them are children and 5,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
From the nominative case of Old English lēah (“wood, meadow”), 'dweller by the wood or clearing'.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Leighs
- Rachael Leigh Cook (born 1979)American actress and model
- Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)British critic, essayist, poet and writer
- Leigh Brackett (1915–1978)American novelist and screenwriter
- Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters (born 1995)model and beauty queen
- Leigh-Allyn Baker (born 1972)American actress
- Leigh Whannell (born 1977)Australian filmmaker and actor
- Leigh Bardugo (born 1975)Israeli-American author
- Leigh Francis (born 1973)British actor and host
People named Leigh with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Leigh is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Leigh is most concentrated in Alabama (2.6×), Tennessee (2.1×), Mississippi (1.9×), North Carolina (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1969
The most popular girls’ names the year Leigh peaked:
Leigh elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland girls | Leigh | 1,923 | 59th |
| England and Wales girls | Leigh | 905 | 296th |
| Ireland boys | Leigh | 389 | 146th |
| England and Wales boys | Leigh | 343 | 423rd |
| Scotland boys | Leigh | 281 | 116th |
| Ireland girls | Leigh | 277 | 206th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Leigh | 35 | 198th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Leigh | 8 | 244th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Leigh among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Leigh | — | 41 |
| Finland boys | Leigh | — | 10 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Leigh against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.