Leander
About 6,956 American babies have been named Leander since 1880, most of them around 2025. In 2025 it ranked 1,459th. About 4,000 Leanders are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 36.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Leander boys named Leander
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 6,956
- Estimated living today
- 4,000
- Median age today
- 36
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 1,459th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,459th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 28 / 6,928
How old the living Leanders are
born that year still alive today
Of the 6,956 babies given the name since 1880, about 4,000 are alive — 58 in every hundred. Roughly 1,400 of them are children and 750 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1989 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 Ancient Greek
From Latin Leander, from Ancient Greek Λέανδρος, from λεώς (Attic form of λᾱός (“people”)) + ἀνήρ (“man”) + -ος.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Leanders
- Leander Paes (born 1973)Indian tennis player
- Leander Dendoncker (born 1995)Belgian association football player
- Leander of Seville (534–600)bishop of Seville
- Leander Starr Jameson (1853–1917)Prime Minister of the Cape Colony
- Leander Engström (1886–1927)Swedish architect and painter
People named Leander with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Leander is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Leander is most concentrated in Arizona (7.8×), Minnesota (6.8×), North Carolina (4.7×), Mississippi (3.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Leander peaked:
Leander elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Leander | 2,748 | 38th |
| Belgium boys | Leander | 1,069 | 178th |
| Switzerland boys | Leander | 311 | 371st |
| England and Wales boys | Leander | 202 | 1,235th |
| France boys | Leander | 20 | 5,549th |
| Poland boys | Leander | 7 birth registrations | 595th |
| England and Wales girls | Leander | 6 | 5,201st |
| Scotland boys | Leander | 3 | 727th |
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.
Leander: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Leander | 296 | 0.024% | 293rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Leander | 12 | 0.003% | 673rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Leander | 3 | 0.005% | 188th |
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, Leander is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.03% of children were given it – 91 of them.
Leander: rank by region
In 2025, Leander was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Leander | 268 | 22 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Leander appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (198th) and Province of Antwerp (251st).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Leander by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 186 | 72nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Leander 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Leander | 939 | 1,988 |
| Finland boys | Leander | 45 | 841 |
| the Netherlands girls | Leander | 24 | 48 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Related names
Leander against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.