Laila
Feminine · Arabic roots · “night”
Laila is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 43,484 girls against 23 boys since 1880.
Laila is the Arabic word for night, carried into English by one of the oldest love stories still told — the tale of Layla and Majnun, retold in verse by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi in the twelfth century and sung about ever since. Two soft syllables, no hard consonant anywhere in it, and a spelling that reads cleanly in English, Arabic transliteration and Scandinavian alike.
How old is the name Laila?
Laila first appears in US birth records in 1884 — 141 years ago. The typical Laila alive today was born around 2010, making them about 15 years old. About 42,500 people named Laila are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Laila most popular?
Laila peaked in 2009, reaching #135 nationally. Today it ranks #413, 278 places below that high. See the whole 2009 chart.
Laila appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Laylā (Arabic) to Laila
The story of Laila
The Arabic ليلى (Laylā) belongs to a story older than most European literature: Qays, so consumed by love for Layla that he was called Majnun, the madman. Nizami Ganjavi shaped it into a Persian narrative poem in the twelfth century, and from there it traveled through Turkish, Urdu, Kurdish and Malay retellings, carrying the name with it. English speakers met it again through Derek and the Dominos' 1970 song, which Eric Clapton took directly from that Persian version of the tale. Quite separately, Laila has long been a standard given name across Norway, Sweden and Finland, where it comes from the Sámi Láilá — which is why the same six letters turn up in Cairo, Karachi and Kiruna.
Meaning
night
From Arabic layl, night — the same root behind Layla and Leyla. There is a second, unrelated road: in Norway, Sweden and Finland, Laila is documented as a form of the Sámi name Láilá, itself connected to Helga. Same spelling, two separate origins, and both are genuinely in use.
How the name formed
- LaylāArabic
- Layla
- Leyla
- Laila
Related forms: ليلى (Layla) · Layla · Leyla · Leila · Leïla · Laila
Pronouncing Laila
LAY-lah
LAY-lah is the standard reading in the US and matches the Arabic. Some English speakers seeing it cold will try LIE-lah, and in parts of Scandinavia LIE-la is the usual pronunciation — worth expecting the question once or twice a year.
Nicknames for Laila
High
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
- 1884
- Most girls named
- 20082,414 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #135reached in 2009
- Change vs 2023
- −23.7%755 in 2025, from 989
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.
Laila in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- ليلى (Layla) in Arabic — same name
- Layla in English — spelling variant
- Leyla in Turkish — same name
- Leila in Persian — transliteration
- Leïla in French — spelling variant
- Laila in Norwegian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, New York.
Lailas among us
people named Laila are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,129 born in 2025 was named Laila
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Laila
- #413
- Laila on the 2025 chart
- #24
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Laila went to 755 girls in 2025, but Layla, Laylah and Lailah are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 6,403, which makes it the 24th most-given girls’ name of the year — 389 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 251 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 2,129 for Laila itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Maryann test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Laila's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Maryann climbed just as high around 1943, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Maryann's path sketches the road Laila is walking now.
Laila 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
Where Laila is headed
Laila is easing off slowly — about 19% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
High 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.
Laila beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Laila in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Recognized across Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Urdu and Scandinavian naming traditions, with the spelling intact in all of them.
- Short, two syllables, no silent letters, and easy for a small child to say and write early.
- A documented literary history going back to a twelfth-century Persian poem, plus a famous song built on the same story.
- Familiar to nearly everyone in the US without being a name a child is likely to share in her classroom.
- Layla, Leila, Leyla and Laela all sound the same aloud, so expect to spell it often. Laila is well established, but it is not the version most Americans reach for first.
- A minority of readers will say LIE-lah on sight. It is a one-second correction, not a lifelong burden, but it will recur.
- The Clapton song is a strong association for older generations and may come up as a joke or a comment more than once.
- Its high point in American use has passed, so it now sits in the comfortable middle — known by adults, uncommon among children.
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Laila
Feminine · Arabic roots · #413 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lailas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 42,500 people named Laila are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Laila?
- Laila is one of 4 recorded spellings. Layla is the more common one — 5,338 births in 2025 against 755 for Laila.
- How popular is the name Laila in 2025?
- Laila ranks #413 among US girl names in 2025, with 755 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Laila?
- About 1 in every 2,129 US girls born in 2025 was named Laila — 755 in all.
- Will my child share the name Laila with classmates?
- Laila will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Laila
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Alayah#412 · Nalani#414 · Journey#411 · Finley#415 · Mckenna#410 · Holly#416 · Annalise#409 · Charlee#417
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Laila? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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