Ainsleigh
Feminine · “clearing of Aegen”
The -eigh in Ainsleigh is usually read as a modern flourish, and in this one case it is closer to a restoration. The second element of Ainsley is the Old English leah, a woodland clearing, and Leigh is the standard modern English spelling of exactly that word. The respelling accidentally puts the older form back.
How old is the name Ainsleigh?
Ainsleigh first appears in US birth records in 1998 — 27 years ago. The typical Ainsleigh is a kid of about 12 — this name's wave is very recent. About 600 people named Ainsleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Ainsleigh most popular?
Ainsleigh peaked in 2015, reaching #3842 nationally. Today it ranks #6325, 2,483 places below that high. See the whole 2015 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From leah to Ainsleigh
The story of Ainsleigh
Ainsley became a Scottish surname and then, in the twentieth century, a Scottish and English given name for boys before crossing to girls in North America in the 1990s. The wave of respellings that followed was mostly cosmetic, but the -eigh substitution is a special case, because Leigh is a genuine English word and place-name element with the same origin as -ley: both descend from the same Old English noun, and English simply kept two spellings of it. Writing Ainsleigh therefore looks like a modern invention and lands on a historically real form. Its best year in United States records is 2015, at the crest of the -eigh fashion.
Meaningscholars disagree
clearing of Aegen, or hermitage clearing
Ainsley comes from English place names, Annesley in Nottinghamshire and Ansley in Warwickshire among them, whose first elements are read variously as an Old English personal name, as anset, a hermitage, or as an, one or solitary. The second element, leah, is not in doubt: it is a clearing in woodland, and it survives in modern English as both -ley and Leigh.
How the name formed
- leah
- Ansley
- Ainsley
- Ainsleigh
Related forms: Ainsley · Ansley · Ainslie
Pronouncing Ainsleigh
AYNZ-lee
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The -eigh says a plain -ee here, exactly as in Leigh; it never rhymes with weigh.
Nicknames for Ainsleigh
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1998
- Most girls named
- 201539 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3842reached in 2015
- Change vs 2024
- −5.3%18 in 2025, from 19
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Ainsleigh in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ainsley in English — spelling variant
- Ansley in English — related form
- Ainslie in Scottish — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas.
Ainsleighs among us
people named Ainsleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 89,293 born in 2025 was named Ainsleigh
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Ronya test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Ainsleigh's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ronya climbed just as high around 1967, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ronya's path sketches the road Ainsleigh is walking now.
Ainsleigh sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Ainsleigh beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Ainsleigh in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A real English place-name element behind it, with an unusually well-documented second half.
- Leigh is available as a short form and is a genuine name in its own right.
- The -eigh spelling, unusually, has historical warrant rather than being decorative.
- Ainsley and Ainslie are both far more common and will be written instead.
- The -eigh ending will make some readers try AYNZ-lay first.
- It sits very close to Annsley, Ansley and Kinsley, all of which get confused with it.
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Ainsleigh
Feminine · #6325 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Ainsleighs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Ainsleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Ainsleigh in 2025?
- Ainsleigh ranks #6325 among US girl names in 2025, with 18 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Ainsleigh?
- About 1 in every 89,293 US girls born in 2025 was named Ainsleigh — 18 in all.
- Will my child share the name Ainsleigh with classmates?
- Ainsleigh will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Ainsleigh
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaye#6325 · Doria#6325 · Karolyn#6325 · Rosaleen#6325 · Roni#6325 · Darian#6325 · Svetlana#6325 · Fanny#6325
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Ainsleigh? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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