Leighton
7,868 people in the United States were counted with the surname Leighton in the 2020 census, making it the 4,356th most common in the country. That is about one person in 38,000.
By the numbers
- People
- 7,868
- Rank
- 4,356th
- How common
- 1 in 38,000
- Per 100,000
- 2.6
Where the name comes from
Origin Old English
Various place names in England, Old English leac (“leek”) + tun (“settlement”), also in the sense of a herb garden.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Leighton described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Leighton
- Frederic Leighton (1830–1896)English painter and sculptor
- Edmund Blair Leighton (1852–1922)British Romantic painter
- Margaret Leighton (1922–1976)British actress
- Jim Leighton (born 1958)Scottish association football player
- Laura Leighton (born 1968)American actress
- Robert B. Leighton (1919–1997)American astronomer
- Amanda Leighton (born 1993)American actress
- Arthur Leighton (1889–1939)field hockey player
People named Leighton with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Leighton
Also a first name
Leighton has been given to 21,823 American babies as a first name since 1893, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.