Lela
Slavic at root, tied to *noc*, "night", though whether that sense lived in the name from the start is hard to settle. Just over 200 Polish women carry it, all of them women, and most Poles have never met one.
Lela Pronunciation
Lela is pronounced LE-lah (/ˈlɛla/).
What Lela means
Where Lela comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Lela comes from the Slavic language family, and that is where its story starts. The meaning fixed to it is "night", in Polish noc. Whether that sense lived inside the name from the beginning or gathered around it later is hard to settle, so the reading of "night" is better told as a meaning the name grew into than as a literal origin.
A short name. Lela carries two soft syllables and no cultural badge, no saint and no famous variant standing behind it. When a child called Lela turns up on a school register in September, the name sits plainly among the Zuzannas and Majas, easy to say and quick to write.
The Slavic word noc, night, reaches across the family, from Czech noc to Russian noch, and it is that word Lela stays close to. What holds the name in the end is the plain Slavic meaning, night, noc.
How many people are named Lela
1 in 105840 women in Poland is named Lela. 213 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2144 among female names.
Lela as a middle name
Lela is a first name for 213 women in Poland and a middle name for another 2, a 99/1 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 6226th, between Lei (2) and Lelia (2).
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#6224 Lebogang2
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#6225 Lei2
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#6226 Lela2
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#6227 Lelia2
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#6228 Lemonia2