Lelah
Feminine · “Arabic layla”
Layla and Majnun is the great love story of the Islamic world, told by Nizami in 1188 and retold for eight centuries from Turkey to Bengal. Majnun means possessed. He goes mad in the desert reciting poems about a woman he cannot marry, and the name Layla means night.
How old is the name Lelah?
Lelah first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Lelah alive today was born around 1923, making them about 102 years old. About 800 people named Lelah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lelah most popular?
Lelah peaked in 1893, reaching #473 nationally. Today it ranks #9457, 8,984 places below that high. See the whole 1893 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From layla to Lelah
The story of Lelah
The story is older than Nizami and probably has a historical core in a seventh-century Bedouin poet, Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, whose verses about a woman named Layla were collected and whose obsession earned him the name Majnun, possessed by a jinn. Nizami's Persian version of 1188 turned it into a sustained poem and it became the model for tragic love across the Persian, Turkish, Urdu and Punjabi traditions, retold by Amir Khusrau, Jami, Fuzuli and dozens of others. Layla's name means night and the poem uses it constantly. English met the name through Byron and the Orientalist poetry of the 1810s, which is why it appears in American records through the nineteenth century, decades before any modern song attached itself to the same story.
Meaning
Arabic layla, night
Lelah is a spelling of Leila or Layla, from Arabic layla, night, also used for a dark-haired or dark-eyed woman. The name reached English through Byron and other Romantic poets in the early nineteenth century, well before its later popular associations. The terminal h follows the Arabic spelling. The American peak of this spelling is 1893.
How the name formed
- layla
- Leila
- Lelah
Related forms: Layla · Leila · Leyli
Pronouncing Lelah
LEE-lah
Two syllables, stress on the first. Arabic layla is LAY-lah with a different first vowel, and both readings are in English use under different spellings.
Nicknames for Lelah
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
- 1881
- Most girls named
- 191543 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #473reached in 1893
- Change vs 2022
- −28.6%10 in 2025, from 14
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.
Lelah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Layla in Arabic — same name
- Leila in English — spelling variant
- Leyli in Persian — same name
Lelahs among us
people named Lelah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 160,727 born in 2025 was named Lelah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Lelah
- #9457
- Lelah on the 2025 chart
- #687
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Lelah went to 10 girls in 2025, but Leela, Lela and Leelah are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 280, which makes it the 687th most-given girls’ name of the year — 8,770 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 5,740 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 160,727 for Lelah 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
Fashion outlook
Lelah 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
Lelah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Lelah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is a single clear word.
- Lee works as a short form and is a name in its own right.
- It has a documented literary history of eight hundred years.
- Leila and Layla are both commoner spellings.
- The first vowel is said two ways depending on the spelling.
- The final h is silent in English.
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Lelah
Feminine · #9457 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lelahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Lelah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Lelah?
- Lelah is one of 4 recorded spellings. Leela is the more common one — 175 births in 2025 against 10 for Lelah.
- How popular is the name Lelah in 2025?
- Lelah ranks #9457 among US girl names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Lelah?
- About 1 in every 160,727 US girls born in 2025 was named Lelah — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Lelah with classmates?
- Lelah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Lelah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Leta#9457 · Inga#9457 · Delphia#9457 · Cammie#9457 · Lisandra#9457 · Amee#9457 · Venecia#9457 · Annetta#9457
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lelah? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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