Lela
Lela reached its high-water mark in 1921 at number 212, and has been recorded 43,073 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,368th. About 12,000 Lelas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 58.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lela boys named Lela
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 43,073
- Estimated living today
- 12,000
- Median age today
- 58
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 212th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,368th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 43,005 / 68
How old the living Lelas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 43,073 babies given the name since 1880, about 12,000 are alive — 29 in every hundred. Roughly 2,300 of them are children and 5,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 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 Georgian
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lelas
- Lela Star (born 1985)American pornographic actress
- Lela Javakhishvili (born 1984)Georgian chess player
- Lela Rochon (born 1964)American actress and film producer
- Lela Karagianni (1898–1944)Greek resistance leader
- Lela Tsurtsumia (born 1969)Georgian singer
People named Lela with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lela is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lela is most concentrated in Mississippi (4.8×), Arkansas (3.9×), Oklahoma (3.9×), Alabama (3.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular girls’ names the year Lela peaked:
Lela elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Lela | 136 | 2,325th |
| France girls | Lela +1 spelling | 115 | 4,329th |
| Ireland girls | Lela | 6 | 655th |
| Scotland girls | Lela | 5 | 571st |
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.
Lela by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 4 | 555th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Where Lela lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 181 women called Lela 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rioja, La | Lela | 13 | 0.078 | 935 |
| Barcelona | Lela | 70 | 0.023 | 2,014 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Lela | 21 | 0.020 | 2,425 |
| Tarragona | Lela | 6 | 0.014 | 2,956 |
| Valencia/València | Lela | 13 | 0.009 | 3,787 |
| Bizkaia | Lela | 5 | 0.008 | 3,524 |
Listed in 6 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 46 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
Lela 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.