Jala
Feminine · “dew”
Persian names its daughters after weather and light. Jaleh is dew, Baran is rain, Shabnam is night-dew, Setareh is a star, Mahtab is moonlight. Jala is the Turkish and American spelling of the first of those — a word for what is on the grass at six in the morning.
How old is the name Jala?
Jala first appears in US birth records in 1973 — 52 years ago. The typical Jala alive today was born around 2002, making them about 23 years old. About 2,000 people named Jala are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jala most popular?
Jala peaked in 2001, reaching #1187 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 9,730 places below that high. See the whole 2001 chart.
Where it comes from
From jaleh to Jala
The story of Jala
Persian has a whole class of women's names taken from things in the sky and on the ground at dawn, and they are ordinary words rather than name-words: a Persian speaker hearing Jaleh hears dew, the way an English speaker hearing Dawn hears dawn. Turkish borrowed a great many of these during the centuries when Persian was the literary language of the Ottoman court, and wrote them by Turkish rules, which is where Jale comes from. The American spelling drops the final e and keeps the sound in the middle. It also drops the one piece of information the original carried, because in Persian and Turkish the j is the soft sound in measure, not the hard one in jam.
Meaningscholars disagree
dew — or, in the other readings, water
Three documented sources reach this spelling. Persian jaleh means dew, and is given as Jale in Turkish. Sanskrit jala means water, and is an element in a long row of Indian names and place names. Arabic jala carries a sense of clearing or making plain. The spelling does not indicate which family a Jala belongs to.
How the name formed
- jaleh
- Jale
- Jala
Related forms: Jaleh · Jale · Jala
Pronouncing Jala
JAH-lah
Two syllables, stress on the first. The letter j is the problem: English says it as in jam, Persian and Turkish as the s in measure, Spanish as a throat sound. Three languages, three readings, one letter.
Nicknames for Jala
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
- 1973
- Most girls named
- 2001172 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1187reached in 2001
- Change vs 2024
- −11.1%8 in 2025, from 9
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.
Jala in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Jaleh in Persian — same name
- Jale in Turkish — same name
- Jala in Azerbaijani — same name
Jalas among us
people named Jala are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Jala
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 Leighann test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jala's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Leighann climbed just as high around 1986, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Leighann's path sketches the road Jala is walking now.
Jala 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
Jala beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jala in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Four letters and two open syllables, easy in every language that uses it.
- The Persian and Sanskrit sources are both ordinary, concrete words.
- It is short without being a shortening of anything.
- The j is said three different ways depending on who is reading, and none of them is wrong.
- Jayla, Jaila and Jala are all in use and will be confused with each other.
- The meaning depends on which of three languages you are claiming, and the name does not say.
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What they receive
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Jala
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jalas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,000 people named Jala are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Jala in 2025?
- Jala ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jala?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Jala — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jala with classmates?
- Jala will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jala
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Claribel#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jala? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Jala and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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