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Lailah vs Layla

American parents have registered 129,245 Laylas since 1880, against 6,900 Lailahs. Layla is still ahead, with 5,338 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lailah against Layla, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lailah Layla

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

Layla has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1950 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1991, when Lailah had 11 and Layla had 109.

Side by side

  Lailah Layla
Total US births 6,900129,245
Most in one year 4516,528
Babies in 2025 1315,338
Estimated living today 6,800128,000
Median age today 1210
Peak year 20102019
Best rank 650th girls23rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,592nd36th
First recorded 19811950
Girls / boys 6,900 / 0129,136 / 109

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 Lailahs alive today are over 12; half the Laylas are over 10. That is 2 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 Lailah Layla
England and Wales 43625,353
Scotland 342,398
Ireland 32,220
Northern Ireland 5497

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: Lailah and Layla.