Lea

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Lea boys named Lea

By the numbers

Total US births

34,468

Estimated living today

30,000

Median age today

37

Peak year

1970

Best rank

396th

Rank in 2025

848th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

33,848 / 620

How old the living Leas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 34,468 babies given the name since 1880, about 30,000 are alive — 86 in every hundred. Roughly 7,300 of them are children and 3,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Hebrew

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Leas

• Léa Seydoux (born 1985)French actress
• Lea Michele (born 1986)American actress and singer
• Lea Salonga (born 1971)Filipino actress and singer
• Lea Thompson (born 1961)American actress
• Lea Massari (1933–2025)Italian actress
• Lea Schüller (born 1997)German association football player
• Lea Sirk (born 1989)Slovene singer
• Léa Drucker (born 1972)French actress

People named Lea with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Lea is most common

• CA4,190
• NY2,923
• TX2,499
• PA1,420
• IL1,360
• FL1,316
• OH1,117
• NJ1,040
• MI951
• MA917

Relative to how many babies each state records, Lea is most concentrated in Hawaii (1.5×), California (1.5×), Florida (1.4×), New York (1.4×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1970

The most popular girls’ names the year Lea peaked:

• Jennifer
• Lisa
• Kimberly
• Michelle
• Amy
• Angela

All the names of 1970

Lea elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Lea: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Lea is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.85% of children were given it – 124 of them.

Lea: rank by region

In 2025, Lea was given 5 times or more in 6 regions of Belgium. It has come first somewhere in 13 different years.

In 2024, Lea was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Lea was given 2 times or more in 15 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lea appears in the lists for Province of Walloon Brabant (Léa, 8th), Brussels-Capital Region (Léa, 14th), Province of Liège (Léa, 18th), Province of Namur (Léa, 20th), Province of Luxembourg (Léa, 21st), Province of Flemish Brabant (Lea, 28th), Province of Hainaut (Léa, 28th), Province of Antwerp (Lea, 44th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Léa, 65th), Province of Limburg (Léa, 81st), Province of West Flanders (Lea, 103rd), Province of East Flanders (Léa, 109th), Province of West Flanders (Léa, 120th), Province of East Flanders (Lea, 123rd), Brussels-Capital Region (Lea, 132nd) and Province of Antwerp (Léa, 204th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Lea by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Lea among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Lea lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,709 women called Lea were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 43 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 9 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Leah
• Leanne
• Leanna
• Leann
• Leandro
• Leandra
• Leander
• Leatha
• Leatrice
• Leana
• Leamon
• Leandre

Lea against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Lea vs Leah
• Lea vs Leanne
• Lea vs Leanna
• Lea vs Leann
• Lea vs Leandro
• Lea vs Leandra

Compare Lea with a name of your own