Lyla
Feminine · “night" in Arabic”
Lyla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 49,294 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Lyla is the English-spelled cousin of Layla, a name carried for centuries in Arabic poetry and later by Persian, Turkish and English writers. It is two open syllables with nothing hard in them — the L sounds bracket a long bright vowel, which is part of why it travels so easily between languages. Spoken aloud, it belongs to the same family as Lila, Leila and Laila, all of which lead back to the same source.
How old is the name Lyla?
Lyla first appears in US birth records in 1884 — 141 years ago. The typical Lyla is a kid of about 8 — this name's wave is very recent. About 46,500 people named Lyla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Lyla most popular?
Lyla peaked in 2025, reaching #80 nationally. Today it ranks #80, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From Layla to Lyla
The story of Lyla
The oldest road runs through Arabic, where Layla is the woman at the center of the Layla and Majnun story — an Arabic tale of doomed love that the Persian poet Nizami turned into a long verse romance in the twelfth century, after which it spread across Persian, Turkish, Urdu and Kurdish literature. English picked the name up in the Romantic era, where Byron used the form Leila in his Eastern tales, and again in the twentieth century through popular music. Lyla itself is the later, plainer English respelling: the y does the work the i or ay does elsewhere, keeping the pronunciation while giving the name a look at home on an English page.
Meaningscholars disagree
"night" in Arabic, through Layla — though the Lila/Lyla spellings also draw on Sanskrit "play"
Two serious lines meet at this spelling. The dominant one is Arabic layla, "night", the name of the beloved in the classical Layla and Majnun story, which reaches English as Layla, Leila and Laila. The other is Sanskrit līlā, "play" or "divine play", the source of Indian Lila. Because Lyla is a modern English respelling rather than a name with its own separate paper trail, it inherits both readings honestly.
How the name formed
- Layla
- Leila
- Lila
- Lyla
Related forms: Layla · Leylâ · Leyli · Leila · Laila · Lila
Pronouncing Lyla
LY-luh
First syllable rhymes with "my". The most frequent mix-up is with Layla (LAY-luh) and with Lila, which some families say LY-luh and others LEE-luh — expect to correct both.
Nicknames for Lyla
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
- 1884
- Most girls named
- 20253,089 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #80reached in 2025
- Change vs 2022
- +15.9%3,089 in 2025, from 2,665
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.
Lyla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Layla in Arabic — transliteration
- Leylâ in Turkish — same name
- Leyli in Persian — related form
- Leila in English — spelling variant
- Laila in English — spelling variant
- Lila in Hindi / Sanskrit-derived — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from National Records of Scotland, Office for National Statistics. Sources
Lylas among us
people named Lyla are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 520 born in 2025 was named Lyla
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Lyla
- #80
- Lyla on the 2025 chart
- #19
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Lyla went to 3,089 girls in 2025, but Lilah, Lila and Lylah and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 9 spellings went to 7,096, which makes it the 19th most-given girls’ name of the year — 61 places above the chart.
and 4 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 227 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 520 for Lyla 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 Regina test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Lyla's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Regina climbed just as high around 1967, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Regina's path sketches the road Lyla is walking now.
Lyla is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Lyla is headed
Lyla 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.
Lyla beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Lyla in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Short, evenly stressed and readable at first sight for English speakers, with no silent letters and no ambiguity about where the emphasis falls.
- Sits on a name with a very long documented literary history in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, so it is recognizable well beyond English.
- Used across the English-speaking world, including in Britain, which makes it portable rather than regional.
- Two syllables that pair cleanly with most surnames, long or short, without running vowels together.
- Lila, Leila, Layla and Laila all sound close or identical, so she will spell it out often and receive mail with the other versions.
- This is a recent wave rather than a long steady presence, so most people carrying the name are children — the effect skews young for now, and is climbing.
- She is unlikely to share it with a classmate today, but a fast-rising name can feel more crowded by the time she reaches high school.
- The name is already brief, so it offers little room for shortening — worth knowing if you like having a formal version to fall back on.
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What they receive
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Lyla
Feminine · #80 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Lylas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 46,500 people named Lyla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Lyla?
- Lyla is the most-used spelling in US records — 3,089 of the 7,096 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Lilah, Lila, Lylah and Lylla.
- How popular is the name Lyla in 2025?
- Lyla ranks #80 among US girl names in 2025, with 3,089 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Lyla?
- About 1 in every 520 US girls born in 2025 was named Lyla — 3,089 in all.
- Will my child share the name Lyla with classmates?
- Lyla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Lyla
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Madeline#81 · Melody#79 · Liliana#78 · Josie#82 · Ayla#77 · Lucia#83 · Maeve#76 · Addison#84
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Lyla? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Lyla and another name?
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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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