Leland
Meaning
place name/surname, "fallow land, meadow land"
The story
Leland comes from an English place name meaning fallow land. Its American record gives that image an unusual shape: a vintage crest of about 8,100 in the 1920s, when the university named for Leland Stanford was already established in the West, then a long decline to about 1,900 in the 1990s. The name rose again to about 8,400 in the 2010s, slightly above its earlier crest, and has 3,800 births so far this decade. The record totals about 57,800 boys and 550 girls. The two crests sit in the same series and can be compared directly. A place name crossed into personal use, rested for most of a century, and returned to roughly its old height on a second curve.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Leland peaked in the 2010s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
The Leland deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Leland 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 Leland fits with your family’s names and surname.
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