Layla
Feminine · Arabic roots · “night”
Layla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 129,136 girls against 109 boys since 1880.
Layla comes from the Arabic word for night, and it belongs to one of the oldest love stories in Arabic literature — the tale of Layla and Majnun, told in verse since the seventh century and shaped into its most famous form by the Persian poet Nizami in the twelfth. In English it arrived by two roads, poetry and pop music, and it lands in the mouth the same easy way each time: two open syllables, LAY-luh, ending on a soft vowel.
How old is the name Layla?
Layla first appears in US birth records in 1950 — 75 years ago. The typical Layla is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 128,000 people named Layla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Layla most popular?
Layla peaked in 2019, reaching #23 nationally. Today it ranks #36, 13 places below that high. See the whole 2019 chart.
Layla appears on these lists:
- Transatlantic hits: loved on both sides of the ocean
- America's top 100 names right now
- Generation Alpha names (born 2013 onward)
- Two-syllable names, the American default
- Five-letter names, the comfortable middle
- Top-100 names that are quietly falling
- all guides
Works in Arabic families too:
Where it comes from
From layl (Arabic, "night") to Layla
The story of Layla
The name is Arabic, and it carries the story of Layla and Majnun with it: Qays falls so hopelessly in love with Layla that he is nicknamed Majnun, "possessed", a tale circulated among Arab poets and then retold at length by Nizami Ganjavi in Persian in the twelfth century. Through Persian, Turkish and Urdu literature the name spread across a huge stretch of the world, appearing as Leyla, Laila and Leila. English-speaking countries knew the Leila spelling first, largely through nineteenth-century poetry and translation. The Layla spelling gathered force after Derek and the Dominos recorded "Layla" in 1970 — Eric Clapton had been reading Nizami's story.
Meaning
night
From Arabic layl, "night"; Laylā is the feminine form, roughly "a night" or "nocturnal".
How the name formed
- laylArabic, "night"
- Laylā
- Leila
- Layla
Related forms: Laylā (ليلى) · Leylâ · Leyli · Leila · Laila · Lejla
Pronouncing Layla
LAY-luh
The ay spelling settles the first vowel, which is the practical advantage over Leila — that one is said both LAY-luh and LEE-luh. In Arabic and Turkish the two syllables sit more evenly, closer to LAY-lah.
Nicknames for Layla
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
- 1972 — Eric Clapton's "Layla" tops US radio
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1950
- Most girls named
- 20196,523 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #23reached in 2019
- Change vs 2024
- +0.2%5,338 in 2025, from 5,325
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.
Layla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Laylā (ليلى) in Arabic — transliteration
- Leylâ in Turkish — same name
- Leyli in Persian — related form
- Leila in English — spelling variant
- Laila in Finnish/Estonian — spelling variant
- Lejla in Bosnian — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from National Records of Scotland, Statistics Canada, Office for National Statistics. Sources
Laylas among us
people named Layla are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 301 born in 2025 was named Layla
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Layla
- #36
- Layla on the 2025 chart
- #24
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Layla went to 5,338 girls in 2025, but Laila, 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 — 12 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 251 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 301 for Layla 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 Andrea test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Layla's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Andrea climbed just as high around 1978, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Andrea's path sketches the road Layla is walking now.
Layla is coming down from a big peak (#23 in 2019). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Layla is headed
Layla should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
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.
Layla beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Layla in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Works across Arabic, Turkish, Persian and English without translation or adjustment — one of the genuinely international two-syllable names.
- Phonetic in English once written: the ay spelling tells a reader exactly which vowel to use.
- A documented literary history going back to seventh-century Arabic poetry, retold in Persian, Urdu and Turkish verse.
- Charts in Scotland, Canada, and England & Wales as well as the US, so it travels without explanation in English-speaking countries.
- Leila, Laila, Leyla and Lejla are all in circulation, so she will spend a lifetime saying "Layla with a Y" at appointments and coffee counters.
- The Clapton song is inescapable for anyone who knows it, and some will sing the riff on being introduced. Whether that is charming or tiresome depends on the day.
- Sound-alikes cluster nearby — Lyla, Lila, Lily, Leila — so even if she is the only Layla in her grade, hers may not be the only name in that shape.
- Its rise here is recent, so nearly everyone carrying the spelling is young; it reads as a contemporary name rather than an inherited one.
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Layla
Feminine · Arabic roots · #36 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Laylas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 128,000 people named Layla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Layla?
- Layla is the most-used spelling in US records — 5,338 of the 6,403 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Laila, Laylah and Lailah.
- How popular is the name Layla in 2025?
- Layla ranks #36 among US girl names in 2025, with 5,338 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Layla?
- About 1 in every 301 US girls born in 2025 was named Layla — 5,338 in all.
- Will my child share the name Layla with classmates?
- Layla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
- What explains the spikes and dips on Layla's chart?
- Layla climbed after 1972 — Eric Clapton's "Layla" tops US radio.
Ranked beside Layla
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Avery#37 · Valentina#35 · Grace#38 · Emily#34 · Gianna#33 · Ivy#39 · Scarlett#32 · Madison#40
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Layla? See the current top 100.
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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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