Leland
Leland is a boy's name that peaked in 2007, when it was the 315th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 494th. About 33,000 Lelands are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Leland boys named Leland
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 58,556
- Estimated living today
- 33,000
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 2007
- Best rank
- 315th
- Rank in 2025
- 494th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 557 / 57,999
How old the living Lelands are
born that year still alive today
Of the 58,556 babies given the name since 1880, about 33,000 are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 14,000 of them are children and 7,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2002 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 a surname
Shortened from McLeland, McClellan, from Irish Mac Giolla Fhaoláin, "son of servant of (Saint) Faolán (=Little Wolf)".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lelands
- Leland Stanford (1824–1893)American politician and railroad tycoon
- Leland D. Melvin (born 1964)NASA astronaut and engineer
- Leland Orser (born 1960)American actor
- Leland Sklar (born 1947)American bassist and session musician
- Leland Merrill (1920–2009)Olympic wrestler
People named Leland with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Leland is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Leland is most concentrated in South Dakota (3.0×), Nebraska (2.9×), Kansas (2.8×), Iowa (2.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2007
The most popular boys’ names the year Leland peaked:
Leland elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Leland | 1,265 | 234th |
| Scotland boys | Leland | 109 | 241st |
| France boys | Leland | 5 | 5,122nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Leland | 5 | 276th |
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.
Related names
Leland 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.