Paisleigh
Feminine · “From the Scottish town of Paisley”
Paisleigh takes its sound from Paisley, a mill town southwest of Glasgow whose weavers spent the nineteenth century copying the curved boteh motif of Kashmiri shawls — so well that English simply named the pattern after the town. The spelling with -leigh borrows the ending already worn by Ashleigh, Kayleigh and Haleigh, an old English word for a meadow that has been attached to first names for generations.
How old is the name Paisleigh?
Paisleigh first appears in US birth records in 2006 — 19 years ago. The typical Paisleigh is a kid of about 6 — this name's wave is very recent. About 3,500 people named Paisleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Paisleigh most popular?
Paisleigh peaked in 2018, reaching #775 nationally. Today it ranks #1043, 268 places below that high. See the whole 2018 chart.
Paisleigh appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Paisley (town in Renfrewshire, Scotland) to Paisleigh
The story of Paisleigh
The story starts as geography: Paisley in Renfrewshire, home to an abbey and later to the looms that made the town's name a word for a fabric design. Like many Scottish place names it became a surname, and like many surnames it crossed to America and eventually became a girl's given name there — a nineteenth-century pattern that has never stopped working. Paisleigh is the American respelling of that name, swapping the plain -ley for the -leigh already familiar from Ashleigh and Kayleigh, and it belongs entirely to this century.
Meaningscholars disagree
From the Scottish town of Paisley; the town's own name is disputed
The leading reading traces Paisley to a Brittonic word meaning a major church or basilica, ultimately from Latin basilica. Other scholars leave it unexplained. What is not in doubt is the later meaning the town gave English: paisley, the teardrop textile pattern. The -leigh ending is a separate English element meaning meadow or clearing, carried over from names like Ashleigh.
How the name formed
- Paisleytown in Renfrewshire, Scotland
- PaisleyScottish surname
- PaisleyAmerican girl's given name
- Paisleigh
Related forms: Paisley · Paislee
Pronouncing Paisleigh
PAYZ-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first, identical to the fabric pattern. The -leigh ending is pronounced simply -lee. Speakers of American English almost never hesitate over how to say it — only over how to spell it.
Nicknames for Paisleigh
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
- 2006
- Most girls named
- 2018352 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #775reached in 2018
- Change vs 2024
- +30.1%238 in 2025, from 183
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.
Paisleigh in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Paisley in English — spelling variant
- Paislee in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Ohio, North Carolina.
Paisleighs among us
people named Paisleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 6,753 born in 2025 was named Paisleigh
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Makala test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Paisleigh's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Makala climbed just as high around 1998, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Makala's path sketches the road Paisleigh is walking now.
Paisleigh 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 Paisleigh is headed
Paisleigh is easing off slowly — about 22% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
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.
Paisleigh beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Paisleigh in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Says itself: anyone who knows the word paisley reads it correctly on sight, with no pronunciation lesson required.
- The -leigh ending has a long track record in English given names, so the spelling looks familiar even when the whole name is new.
- Carries a real place behind it — a Scottish mill town and the textile pattern named for it — which gives the name something concrete to point to.
- Short forms are available without being obligatory: Pais and Leigh both work, and the full name is easy enough to keep.
- Paisley is by far the dominant spelling, so this one will be corrected and re-corrected for life. Expect to spell it out on every form, and expect a fair number of people to write Paisley anyway.
- The -leigh respelling is strongly associated with names given in the last couple of decades, which means it may read as a marker of a particular era once she is grown.
- Because the name's wave is so recent, nearly everyone who carries it is still a child — there are no adult namesakes to point to, only the town and the pattern.
- Sharing a spelling with a fabric design is mostly a gift, but it does mean occasional jokes about curtains and neckties.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Paisleigh
Feminine · #1043 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Paisleighs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,500 people named Paisleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Paisleigh in 2025?
- Paisleigh ranks #1043 among US girl names in 2025, with 238 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Paisleigh?
- About 1 in every 6,753 US girls born in 2025 was named Paisleigh — 238 in all.
- Will my child share the name Paisleigh with classmates?
- Paisleigh will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Paisleigh
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Whitney#1043 · Lorraine#1043 · Eimy#1043 · Salome#1040 · Alexia#1040 · Kairi#1040 · Inara#1047 · Harlee#1047
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Paisleigh? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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