Leila
From Hebrew, where it carries the sense of "night". Fewer than a thousand Polish women share it, so most people here have never crossed paths with one, though it keeps drawing a few new parents each year.
Leila Pronunciation
Leila is pronounced le-EE-lah (/lɛˈila/).
What Leila means
Where Leila comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Leila begins in Hebrew, in the word laylah, meaning night. The name moved into Arabic and became bound up with it there, above all through the old story of Layla and Majnun, the poet driven half-mad by love for a woman named for the dark. Nizami set that tale into verse in the twelfth century, and it has been retold across the Arabic and Persian world ever since.
The meaning stayed close to the surface. Night is not a threat here. It is the cool hour after heat, the sky a name can point to.
In Poland the name arrives with no diminutives or variants to soften it. On a class register it sits plainly, five letters, foreign and clear. Leila. What a Polish child carries in it is the oldest sense of the word: night, noc.
How many people are named Leila
1 in 23983 women in Poland is named Leila. 940 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #989 among female names.
Leila's popularity over time
21 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #501 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2002.
Where Leila is most popular
Leila is most popular in West Pomeranian, 174% above the national average (12 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Lower Silesian (+72%) and Pomeranian (+70%). It is least common in Łódź and Kuyavian-Pomeranian, 70% and 65% below average respectively.
-
West Pomeranian12 girls born+174%
-
Lower Silesian14 girls born+72%
-
Pomeranian13 girls born+70%
-
Masovian29 girls born+58%
-
Lubusz4 girls born+55%
-
Greater Poland17 girls born+52%
-
Warmian-Masurian3 girls born−19%
-
Silesian9 girls born−24%
-
Świętokrzyskie2 girls born−30%
-
Lesser Poland5 girls born−57%
-
Kuyavian-Pomeranian2 girls born−65%
-
Łódź2 girls born−70%
Leila as a middle name
Leila is a first name for 940 women in Poland and a middle name for another 112, an 89/11 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 627th, between Iwetta (112) and Vivien (112).
-
#625 Włodzimiera113
-
#626 Iwetta112
-
#627 Leila112
-
#628 Vivien112
-
#629 Wera112