Lailah
Feminine · “night”
Lailah is night, in Arabic and Hebrew both — layl and laylah, the same Semitic word, and in one rabbinic tradition the name of the angel of conception.
How old is the name Lailah?
Lailah first appears in US birth records in 1981 — 44 years ago. The typical Lailah is a kid of about 12 — this name's wave is very recent. About 6,900 people named Lailah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lailah most popular?
Lailah peaked in 2010, reaching #650 nationally. Today it ranks #1592, 942 places below that high. See the whole 2010 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From laylah to Lailah
The story of Lailah
Layla and Majnun is the great Persian and Arabic love story, retold by Nizami in 1188 — the model for a thousand years of doomed romance in the Islamic world. Eric Clapton's 1970 song brought the name to English-speaking audiences. Lailah appears in the American registers as one of several spellings and is in current use.
Meaning
night
From the Arabic layla and the Hebrew laylah, both meaning 'night' — the same Semitic root. In the Talmud, Lailah is named as the angel who watches over conception and teaches the unborn child the whole Torah, which it forgets at birth. The word is ordinary and undisputed.
How the name formed
- laylah
- Layla
- Lailah
Related forms: ليلى · Layla · Laylah · Leila
Pronouncing Lailah
LAY-luh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Arabic Layla gives the final vowel a fuller value, LAY-lah.
Nicknames for Lailah
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
- 1981
- Most girls named
- 2010451 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #650reached in 2010
- Change vs 2024
- −40.7%131 in 2025, from 221
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.
Lailah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- ليلى in Arabic — transliteration
- Layla in English — spelling variant
- Laylah in Hebrew — related form
- Leila in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Lailahs among us
people named Lailah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 12,269 born in 2025 was named Lailah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Lailah
- #1592
- Lailah on the 2025 chart
- #24
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Lailah went to 131 girls in 2025, but Layla, Laila and Laylah 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 — 1,568 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 251 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 12,269 for Lailah 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 Tana test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Lailah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Tana climbed just as high around 1962, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Tana's path sketches the road Lailah is walking now.
Lailah 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 Lailah is headed
Lailah 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.
Lailah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Lailah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The night meaning is concrete and identical in both Arabic and Hebrew.
- The angel-of-conception tradition is a genuinely remarkable piece of rabbinic lore.
- One of the great love stories of world literature carries it.
- At least four spellings of the sound are in common use.
- Layla is much the commoner American spelling.
- It will be respelled by other people constantly.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Lailah
Feminine · #1592 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lailahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,900 people named Lailah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Lailah?
- Lailah is one of 4 recorded spellings. Layla is the more common one — 5,338 births in 2025 against 131 for Lailah.
- How popular is the name Lailah in 2025?
- Lailah ranks #1592 among US girl names in 2025, with 131 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Lailah?
- About 1 in every 12,269 US girls born in 2025 was named Lailah — 131 in all.
- Will my child share the name Lailah with classmates?
- Lailah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Lailah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaelyn#1592 · Alaiyah#1592 · Journie#1592 · Lani#1592 · Calista#1592 · Aislinn#1592 · Ever#1592 · Cienna#1592
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lailah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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