Leila
Meaning
night (an alternate spelling of Layla, kept distinct by many families for its own crossover history, including the Eric Clapton song)
The story
Leila is the night in Arabic, and among the night-sisters on this site it is the steady one. Lila crashed and revived; Layla spiked with a rock song; Leila simply never left, between about 1,500 and 3,300 girls every single decade from the 1890s through the 1990s, eleven decades without a gap, the mark of a spelling families across several cultures kept choosing on their own. Our meaning records note that many families keep it deliberately distinct from Layla, and the record supports them. The modern rise came anyway: about 9,900 in the 2000s, 13,900 in the 2010s, and 7,700 so far this decade, all girls. The all-time count stands near 54,400 girls to 11 boys. Persian poetry, Arabic nights, English romantic verse: Leila has been at home in all three for two centuries, and in American nurseries for over one.
Leila around the world
One shared root links 7 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: from Arabic layl "night", spread by the seventh-century romance of Layla and Majnun
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Leila peaked in the 2010s.
Popularity in Brazil
94,285 people · the #335 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 2,155 · median age 46
Among people named Leila living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1970s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 335 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Leila deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Leila truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Leila fits with your family’s names and surname.
Where Leila travels
Persian · night (shared Persian-Arabic literary name, Layla and Majnun)
Keep exploring
Names like Leila · Arab American baby names · Persian baby names
Does Leila fit YOUR family?
nametree reads your family’s names and finds the ones that belong. Free, private, no ads.
Add Leila to your family’s tree →