Leigh vs Leila

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Leigh Leila

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Leila for 95 years and Leigh for 51 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

• 1880–1945 Leila ahead
• 1946–1996 Leigh ahead
• 1997–2025 Leila ahead

Side by side

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 Leighs alive today are over 52; half the Leilas are over 15. That is 37 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Leigh Alabama (2.6×), Tennessee (2.1×), Mississippi (1.9×)
• Leila Hawaii (5.0×), Nevada (2.3×), Georgia (2.2×)

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.

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

• Leigh vs Leilani
• Leigh vs Leighton
• Leigh vs Leia
• Leigh vs Leif
• Leigh vs Leigha
• Leila vs Leilani
• Leila vs Leighton
• Leila vs Leia