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Leah vs Leeah

American parents have registered 256,954 Leahs since 1880, against 1,333 Leeahs. Leah is still ahead, with 3,880 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Leah Leeah

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

Leah has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Leah had 5,786 and Leeah had 84.

Side by side

  Leah Leeah
Total US births 256,9541,333
Most in one year 6,79984
Babies in 2025 3,88012
Estimated living today 233,0001,300
Median age today 2316
Peak year 20092012
Best rank 29th girls2,232nd girls
Rank in 2025 58th8,362nd
First recorded 18801977
Girls / boys 256,488 / 4661,333 / 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 Leahs alive today are over 23; half the Leeahs are over 16. That is 7 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 Leah Leeah
England and Wales 33,4584
France 1,62515

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: Leah and Leeah.