Laila
given name · Latin script
Meaning: night; also used for Layla/Leila
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lejlə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Laila is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Morocco than in any other country.
- MAMorocco≈1 in 724(inferred from the name graph)
- EGEgypt≈1 in 3.7K
- BRBrazil1 in 5.6K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Morocco (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 233 (measured from records)
- 1 in 561 (inferred from the name graph)
≈49,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
night; also used for Layla/Leila. A classic Arabic female name.
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Laila counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MA Morocco | #113 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 724 | — | Laila | 113 |
| BR Brazil | — | 38,099 | 1 in 5.6K | 38K | Laila | 133 |
| US United States | — | 35,860 | 1 in 9.3K | 36K | Laila | 233 |
| EG Egypt | #369 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Laila | 110 |
| AF Afghanistan | #163 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Laila | 16 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11,689 | 1 in 873 | 12K | Laila | 29 |
| NO Norway | — | 9,744 | 1 in 561 | 31K | Laila | 31 |
| DK Denmark | — | 6,370 | 1 in 921 | 6.4K | — | — |
| LV Latvia | — | 2,237 | 1 in 841 | 2.2K | — | 15 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Laila is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Laila (m.fl. former) är ett samiskt namn som antas hänga samman med kvinnonamnet → Aila. Namnet fick spridning på 1880-talet genom översättningar av norrmannen J.A. Friis bok Fra Finnmarken; alla senare utgåvor bär titeln Laila. Stavat Leila eller Layla finns namnet också i arabiskan med betydelsen ’natt’ (→ Leila). I den rikssvenska almanackan 5 juli och i den finlandssvenska 5 mars.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Arabic, night
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
black, a famous Arab
as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
Notte
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
1 English: variant spelling of LEILA . 2 Scandinavian: ancient name of Saami origin, not uncommon in modern Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Top
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Leila Hyamsb. 1905USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1905-1977)
- Leila Khaledb. 1944LBnot in their usual namePalestinian refugee, former militant, and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Laila Morseb. 1945GBEnglish actress (born 1945)
- Laila Robinsb. 1959USAmerican actress
- Leila Pahlavib. 1970IRnot in their usual nameIranian princess (1970-2001)
- Laila Rouassb. 1971GBBritish actress
- Leila Hatamib. 1972IRnot in their usual nameIranian actress
- Laila Alib. 1977USAmerican television personality and retired professional boxer
- Leila Lopesb. 1986AOnot in their usual nameAngolan beauty pageant titleholder
- Leila Georgeb. 1992AUnot in their usual nameAustralian actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 102 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 38K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 38K | #694 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 36K | #1,132 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 31K | #132 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 31K | #1,086 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 12K | #352 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 9.7K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 7.7K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 6.4K | #108 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 5.6K | — |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register) | — | 2.2K | — |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup) | — | 2.2K | #245 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Laila?
- A machine transcription gives /lejlə/ (IPA) for English.
- Where does the name Laila come from?
- night; also used for Layla/Leila. A classic Arabic female name. Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- Is Laila a male or female name?
- Laila is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Laila?
- In the etymology graph, Olga, Olha and Leyla are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Laila mean?
- Recorded meaning: night; also used for Layla/Leila.
- In which country does Laila have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 49 thousand people named Laila in Morocco, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled laila.
- Where is Laila most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Laila is densest in Norway — about 1 in 561 people — even though Morocco holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Laila?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 38,099 people named Laila in 2022, about 1 in 5.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Laila compared with other names?
- In Morocco, Laila is the 113th most common given name of 41,711 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Laila?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lailaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Laila” — the 113th most common given name in Morocco. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.