Entry № 5823 · Arabic origin

Leila Leila — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ LAY-luh /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Arabic
Meaning
"Night (Layla and Majnun's iconic love story)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Ancient (Arabic)

A name that means "night (layla and majnun's iconic love story)".

Leila is the variant spelling of Layla — from the Arabic layl (night). A top-500 US baby name since 2008.

Night (Layla and Majnun's iconic love story) — a Arabic name.

The name in its native script.

ليلى
Transliteration
Laylā
Pronunciation
/ ˈleɪ.lə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Leila stands.

Leila does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Leilas before her.

Real people
Leila Khaled
Palestinian activist.
born 1944
Leila Slimani
Moroccan-French Prix Goncourt novelist.
born 1981
In fiction
Layla + Majnun
Iconic Arabic romance.
12th c.

Names connected to Leila.

The number behind Leila.

3

The Communicator

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Leila reduce to 3, The Communicator. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.