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Leigha vs Leila

American parents have registered 55,447 Leilas since 1880, against 6,594 Leighas. Leila is still ahead, with 1,193 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leigha against Leila, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leigha 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

Leila 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 1990, when Leigha had 165 and Leila had 183.

Side by side

  Leigha Leila
Total US births 6,59455,447
Most in one year 2671,509
Babies in 2025 371,193
Estimated living today 6,50041,000
Median age today 2215
Peak year 20112010
Best rank 956th girls205th girls
Rank in 2025 3,903rd259th
First recorded 19611880
Girls / boys 6,594 / 055,436 / 11

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 Leighas alive today are over 22; half the Leilas are over 15. 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 Leigha Leila
England and Wales 6197,107
Scotland 169490
Ireland 106454
Northern Ireland 4379

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: Leigha and Leila.