Lesley
Masculine · “garden of hollies”
Lesley is given to both — 4,797 boys and 34,301 girls since 1880. See Lesley as a girl nameSee other names given to both
In Britain, Lesley is the woman and Leslie is the man. The split is real, consistent and entirely conventional — nobody legislated it — and America never adopted it, which is why an American Leslie is usually a woman and a British one is usually not. Behind both is a place in Aberdeenshire and a poem by Burns.
How old is the name Lesley?
Lesley first appears in US birth records in 1882 — 143 years ago. The typical Lesley alive today was born around 1956, making them about 69 years old. About 2,900 people named Lesley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lesley most popular?
Lesley peaked in 1903, reaching #527 nationally. See the whole 1903 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Lesslyn to Lesley
The story of Lesley
Robert Burns wrote Bonnie Lesley for a young woman he met in seventeen ninety-two, and it is among the more direct of his love songs — the one that says heaven had made her and then broken the mold. That poem is the earliest visible use of the -ey spelling for a woman, and it is a plausible reason the convention began. By the twentieth century the split was firm in Britain and absent in America, which produced the situation still in force: the same name reads as two different sexes depending on the country.
Meaningscholars disagree
garden of hollies
The Aberdeenshire place appears in early records as Lesslyn, and the usual reading joins a Gaelic word for a garden or enclosure with one for holly. That derivation is traditional and not firmly demonstrated. What is documented is the family: the Leslies held land there from the twelfth century and became earls of Rothes, and the surname is theirs before it is anyone's given name.
How the name formed
- Lesslyn
- Leslie
- Lesley
Pronouncing Lesley
LESS-lee
LESS-lee, two syllables, stress at the front. Leslie and Lesley are said identically; the ending carries the British sex convention and nothing else.
Nicknames for Lesley
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
- 1882
- Most boys named
- 1959101 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #527reached in 1903
- Change vs 2011
- +14.3%8 in 2016, from 7
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.
Lesleys among us
people named Lesley are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Lesley sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- There is a documented Scottish place, family and poem behind it.
- Les and Lee are both usable short forms and they work for either child.
- The -ey spelling reads clearly as a woman's name to anyone who knows the British convention.
- Leslie is far more common in America and the name will be written that way by default.
- The name reads as a man's in Britain if written Leslie and a woman's if written Lesley, which a family that moves will discover.
- It is closely tied to one American generation and dates a person fairly precisely.
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What they receive
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Lesley
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Lesleys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,900 people named Lesley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Lesley in 2025?
- Lesley is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Lesley with classmates?
- Lesley will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More L names
The most-given names starting with L, all years combined.
Larry#1084 · Lawrence#518 · Louis#249 · Logan#53 · Liam#1 · Lucas#10 · Luke#33 · Leonard#637
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lesley? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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