Leïla

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/lɛjla/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Leïla is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Ultimately from Arabic لَيْلَى (laylā).

rarermore common
  • FRFrance≈1 in 24K(inferred from the name graph)
  • FIFinland1 in 532
  • BRBrazil1 in 2.2K

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.

Brazil (measured from records)

94,285 people, 2022

Sources
334 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 532 (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Leila in FR France, US United States, ES Spain.

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)

Ultimately from Arabic لَيْلَى (laylā).

Sources 8

  • A Handbook of African Names
  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • African Names
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Leïla 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.

Where Leïla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil—94,2851 in 2.2K102K—3
US United States—37,7531 in 8.8K38KLeila123
FI Finland—10,4671 in 53216K—6
ES Spain—3,9951 in 13K4KLeila30
SE Sweden—3,9071 in 2.6K3.9K—10
FR France#335≈2,800 est.≈1 in 24K23KLeila334
LV Latvia—5281 in 3.6K535—1
GY Guyana—1961 in 3.8K196——

94,285 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Leïla is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name46 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Philippines

    Languages: English, German, Swedish

    Also written Leila, Leilae, Lei'La', Léila, Léïla

  • a separate name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Léïla, Lei̐la, Léila, Leíla, Lei͏̈la

20 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1900195020002050Leela Row, b. 1911Leïla Menchari, b. 1927Leïla Aouchal, b. 1936Leila Sebbar, b. 1941Leïla Marouane, b. 1960Leïla Kaddour-Boudadi, b. 1980Leïla Slimani, b. 1981Leila Alaoui, b. 1982Leïla Bekhti, b. 1984Leïla Lacan, b. 2004

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)

InformalBonjour Leïla,Hi Leïla, (English)

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 19 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting Leïla
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20247.5K#190
FR FranceDictionary of French Prénoms (Benoist, 2009)———

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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

What does the name Leïla mean, and where does it come from?
Ultimately from Arabic لَيْلَى (laylā). Recorded by A Handbook of African Names and A concise dictionary of first names and 6 other sources.
How do you pronounce Leïla?
A machine transcription gives /lɛjla/ (IPA) for French.
Is Leïla a male or female name?
Leïla 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.
In which country does Leïla have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 94 thousand people named Leïla, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Leïla most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Leïla is densest in Finland — about 1 in 532 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Leïla?
In Brazil, the national register counted 94,285 people named Leïla in 2022, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
How common is Leïla compared with other names?
In France, Leïla is the 335th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Leïla?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/le%C3%AFla

The 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, “Leïla” — the 335th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Leïla parses inside a full name →