Laila
A Hebrew name meaning "night". Still rare in Poland, the kind most people never come across, but it's given a little more each year: 30 newborn girls last year, and always girls.
Laila Pronunciation
Laila is pronounced lah-EE-lah (/laˈila/).
What Laila means
Where Laila comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Laila comes from Hebrew, where laila means night. The word is old and plain, the same one that surfaces in the account of creation, when God called the darkness Night. Arabic carried the sound eastward, and there it became the woman at the center of a great love story. Nizami Ganjavi wrote her down in the twelfth century: Layla, beloved of Qays, who lost his reason for her and so earned the name Majnun. Her name meant night, and his devotion made it known across the Islamic world.
Scandinavia took the name by another road. A Norwegian novel by Jens Andreas Friis, published in 1881, gave its heroine the name Laila, and later films spread it through Norway and among the Sami. By the twentieth century it read as a Nordic name as readily as an eastern one.
So a Polish class register might hold a Laila between a Zofia and a Lena. The meaning stays fixed under every spelling. Night, or in Polish, noc.
How many people are named Laila
1 in 34366 women in Poland is named Laila. 656 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1158 among female names.
Laila's popularity over time
30 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #439 among newborns. It is making a comeback after a low in 2004.
Where parents choose Laila
Laila is most popular in Opole, 94% above the national average (6 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Lower Silesian (+90%) and West Pomeranian (+77%). It is least common in Kuyavian-Pomeranian and Lublin, 73% and 71% below average respectively.
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Opole
+94%1 in 7,683 babies
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Lower Silesian
+90%1 in 7,857 babies
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West Pomeranian
+77%1 in 8,443 babies
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian
−73%1 in 54,690 babies
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Lublin
−71%1 in 51,338 babies
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Podlaskie
−55%1 in 32,893 babies
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Opole+94% 6 born1 in 7,683 babies+94%
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Lower Silesian+90% 20 born1 in 7,857 babies+90%
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West Pomeranian+77% 10 born1 in 8,443 babies+77%
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Greater Poland+66% 24 born1 in 8,968 babies+66%
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Lubusz+50% 5 born1 in 9,931 babies+50%
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Warmian-Masurian+25% 6 born1 in 11,966 babies+25%
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Silesian+18% 18 born1 in 12,644 babies+18%
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Masovian+1% 24 born1 in 14,761 babies+1%
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Pomeranian−19% 8 born1 in 18,415 babies−19%
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Lesser Poland−41% 9 born1 in 25,213 babies−41%
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Łódź−41% 5 born1 in 25,344 babies−41%
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Subcarpathian−51% 4 born1 in 30,141 babies−51%
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Podlaskie−55% 2 born1 in 32,893 babies−55%
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Lublin−71% 2 born1 in 51,338 babies−71%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian−73% 2 born1 in 54,690 babies−73%
Laila as a middle name
Laila is a first name for 656 women in Poland and a middle name for another 120, an 85/15 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 598th, between Hieronima (121) and Suzanne (120).
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#596 Pauline122
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#597 Hieronima121
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#598 Laila120
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#599 Suzanne120
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#600 Virginia120