Gayla
Feminine · “cheerful”
Gayla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 10,838 girls against 6 boys since 1880.
Gayla is Gail with an -a, and it is also the English gala — a festival — which gives the name two readings that American families used interchangeably.
How old is the name Gayla?
Gayla first appears in US birth records in 1921 — 104 years ago. The typical Gayla alive today was born around 1959, making them about 66 years old. About 9,000 people named Gayla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Gayla most popular?
Gayla peaked in 1954, reaching #345 nationally. See the whole 1954 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Abigail to Gayla
The story of Gayla
American families of the 1940s and 1950s built feminine names by adding -a to short forms — Gayla, Darla, Marla, Karla — and Gayla appears in the registers from the 1940s. It rose alongside Gail and Gale at their height and peaked around 1957, then declined with the rest of the family.
Meaningscholars disagree
cheerful; festive occasion
Two routes. As an elaboration of Gail, itself from Abigail, whose Hebrew means 'my father is joy'. Or from the English gala, through the Italian gala and an Old French word for finery — a festive occasion. Both readings are current for American bearers.
How the name formed
- Abigail
- Gail
- Gayla
Related forms: Gaila · Gail · Gala
Pronouncing Gayla
GAY-luh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Gayla and Gaila are said identically.
Nicknames for Gayla
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
- 1921
- Most girls named
- 1954617 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #345reached in 1954
- Change vs 2006
- −25.0%6 in 2014, from 8
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.
Gayla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gaila in English — spelling variant
- Gail in English — related form
- Gala in Italian — related form
Gaylas among us
people named Gayla are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Gayla sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Abigail behind it has a transparent Hebrew meaning and a substantial biblical figure.
- The festive reading is concrete and pleasant.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- The origin is genuinely split between two readings.
- The Gay clipping now reads very differently than it did.
- It is strongly period-coded to the 1950s and 1960s.
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What they receive
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Gayla
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Gaylas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 9,000 people named Gayla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Gayla in 2025?
- Gayla is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Gayla with classmates?
- Gayla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More G names
The most-given names starting with G, all years combined.
Grace#38 · Gloria#654 · Gladys#3211 · Geraldine#2438 · Gail#8362 · Gertrude#6546 · Georgia#99 · Gina#2076
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Gayla? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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