Isla
Feminine · “From a Scottish place name”
Isla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 58,252 girls against 19 boys since 1880.
Isla comes from a small piece of the Scottish map: Islay, the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides, and the rivers Isla that run through Angus and Perthshire. It is two syllables, EYE-la, with a silent s that gives the spelling more weight than the sound. A name that traveled from a Scottish coastline into everyday use across the English-speaking world, and is now especially well represented among the youngest children.
How old is the name Isla?
Isla first appears in US birth records in 1886 — 139 years ago. The typical Isla is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 57,000 people named Isla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Isla most popular?
Isla peaked in 2025, reaching #28 nationally. Today it ranks #28, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From Ìle to Isla
The story of Isla
Islay has been inhabited and named for far longer than any record of it as a personal name; in Gaelic the island is Ìle. Scottish families began using Isla as a girl's given name in the nineteenth century, part of a wider habit of drawing first names from rivers, glens and islands. It stayed largely Scottish for generations before spreading through the rest of Britain and then outward, and it now charts in Scotland, England and Wales, and Canada as well as the United States. The Australian actress Isla Fisher, born in the 1970s, carried the name into wide view outside Britain well before its American wave gathered.
Meaning
From a Scottish place name — the island of Islay and the rivers Isla
The derivation from the place name is well accepted. What Islay itself originally meant is not established; the name is old enough that it predates reliable record, with both Norse and pre-Gaelic explanations offered and none demonstrated. Separately, isla is the ordinary Spanish word for island — a coincidence of spelling rather than a shared root, but one that Spanish-speaking families notice straight away.
Cultural footprint
Isla Fisher (b. 1976) — Comedy standout of Wedding Crashers and Confessions of a Shopaholic
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Ìle
- Islay
- Isla
Related forms: Ìle · Islay · Ila
Pronouncing Isla
EYE-la
The s is silent, as in island. Two common departures: an English speaker seeing it for the first time may try IS-la, and a Spanish speaker will naturally read it as EES-la, since it matches the Spanish word for island. Both are easily corrected, but expect to do the correcting.
Nicknames for Isla
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
- 1886
- Most girls named
- 20256,012 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #28reached in 2025
- Change vs 2023
- +11.6%6,012 in 2025, from 5,386
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.
Isla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ìle in Scottish Gaelic — related form
- Islay in Scots / English — spelling variant
- Ila in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from National Records of Scotland, Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada. Sources
Islas among us
people named Isla are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267 born in 2025 was named Isla
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 Ann test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Isla's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ann climbed just as high around 1936, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ann's path sketches the road Isla is walking now.
Isla is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Isla is headed
Isla should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Isla beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Isla in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Short, already complete, and needs no nickname to be usable at any age.
- Charts in Scotland, England and Wales, and Canada as well as the US, so it is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic.
- One dominant spelling, which keeps forms and rosters simple.
- Reads as a real word in Spanish — island — which travels well in bilingual families.
- The silent s means a lifetime of small corrections, both in speech and when someone hears it and writes Ayla or Isla as IS-la.
- Its rise is recent and steep, so it is far more common among small children than among adults — the balance may look different by the time she is in high school.
- Izzy overlaps with Isabella and Isabel, which are well represented in the same age group.
- Names that sound close — Ella, Ayla, Aria — are also in wide use, so mishearings on the phone are likely.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Isla
Feminine · #28 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Islas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 57,000 people named Isla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Isla in 2025?
- Isla ranks #28 among US girl names in 2025, with 6,012 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Isla?
- About 1 in every 267 US girls born in 2025 was named Isla — 6,012 in all.
- Will my child share the name Isla with classmates?
- Isla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Isla
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ella#29 · Luna#27 · Lainey#30 · Aria#26 · Zoe#31 · Scarlett#32 · Ellie#24 · Lucy#24
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Isla? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Isla and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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