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Leia vs Leilani

American parents have registered 56,491 Leilanis since 1880, against 18,778 Leias. Leilani is still ahead, with 3,792 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leia against Leilani, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leia Leilani

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

Leilani has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1917 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1978, when Leia had 156 and Leilani had 177.

Side by side

  Leia Leilani
Total US births 18,77856,491
Most in one year 1,4243,868
Babies in 2025 1,0333,792
Estimated living today 19,00055,000
Median age today 88
Peak year 20232022
Best rank 211th girls59th girls
Rank in 2025 297th60th
First recorded 19491917
Girls / boys 18,778 / 056,466 / 25

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.

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 Leia Leilani
France 5,670 Leïa270
England and Wales 2,663995
Switzerland 372115
Belgium 2585
Poland 882
Northern Ireland 663

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: Leia and Leilani.