Leila
About 55,447 American babies have been named Leila since 1880, most of them around 2010. In 2025 it ranked 259th. About 41,000 Leilas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Leila boys named Leila
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 55,447
- Estimated living today
- 41,000
- Median age today
- 15
- Peak year
- 2010
- Best rank
- 205th
- Rank in 2025
- 259th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 55,436 / 11
How old the living Leilas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 55,447 babies given the name since 1880, about 41,000 are alive — 75 in every hundred. Roughly 24,000 of them are children and 3,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 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 Arabic
. Taken into English usage through nineteenth-century literature.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Leilas
- Leila Khaled (born 1944)Palestinian refugee, former militant, and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Leila Lopes (born 1986)Angolan beauty pageant titleholder
- Leïla Slimani (born 1981)French-Moroccan writer and journalist
- Leila Hatami (born 1972)Iranian actress
- Leila Pahlavi (1970–2001)Iranian princess
- Leila Ahmed (born 1940)Egyptian-American writer and professor
- Leila Abashidze (1929–2018)Georgian actress, film director, and writer
- Leila Aboulela (born 1964)Sudanese writer and playwright
People named Leila with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Leila is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Leila is most concentrated in Hawaii (5.0×), Nevada (2.3×), Georgia (2.2×), South Carolina (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2010
The most popular girls’ names the year Leila peaked:
Leila elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Leila +3 spellings | 31,060 | 120th |
| England and Wales girls | Leila | 7,107 | 132nd |
| Italy girls | Leila | 2,712 | — |
| Belgium girls | Leila +1 spelling | 1,689 | 223rd |
| Switzerland girls | Leila +1 spelling | 1,432 | 117th |
| Scotland girls | Leila | 490 | 167th |
| Norway girls | Leila | 455 | 200th |
| Ireland girls | Leila | 454 | 168th |
| Poland girls | Leila +1 spelling | 394 birth registrations | 223rd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Leila | 79 | 218th |
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.
Leila: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Leila | 642 | 0.052% | 142nd |
| German girls | Switzerland | Leïla | 23 | 0.002% | 800th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Leila | 476 | 0.109% | 60th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Leïla | 211 | 0.048% | 138th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Leila | 78 | 0.120% | 37th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Leila | 2 | 0.054% | 15th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Leila is most concentrated in Neuchâtel, where 0.18% of children were given it – 63 of them.
Leila: rank by region
In 2025, Leila was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Leila | 584 | 8 |
In 2018, Leila was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Leila | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Leila was given 2 times or more in 4 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Leila | 234 | 2 |
| Mazowieckie | Leila | 187 | 7 |
| Wielkopolskie | Leila | 165 | 5 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Leila | 175 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Leila appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (Leila, 120th) and Brussels-Capital Region (Leïla, 168th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Leila by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 55 | 219th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Leila 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 | Leila | 9,156 | 10,364 |
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.
Where Leila lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 3,995 women called Leila were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ceuta | Leila | 32 | 0.773 | 254 |
| Melilla | Leila | 27 | 0.624 | 285 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Leila | 279 | 0.271 | 380 |
| Málaga | Leila | 237 | 0.259 | 368 |
| Palmas, Las | Leila | 148 | 0.251 | 451 |
| Girona | Leila | 99 | 0.239 | 444 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Leila 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.