Entry № 5879 · Arabic origin

Leyla Leyla — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ LAY-lah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Arabic
Meaning
"Night, dark beauty"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Ancient (Arabic)

A name that means "night, dark beauty".

Leyla is the Turkish, Persian, and Azerbaijani spelling of Layla — from the Arabic laylah, meaning "night." The famous 7th-century Arabic love story Layla and Majnun tells of a beauty whose hair was black as night.

Leyla is enormously popular in Turkey, Iran, and across the Muslim world. In the U.S. the Y-spelling has been rising rapidly — today Leyla sits in the U.S. top 400.

Night. The Turkish-Persian spelling of Layla.

The name in its native script.

ليلى · لیلا
Transliteration
Laylā
Pronunciation
/ ˈleɪ.lə /
Root
—
Grammatical form
—

Where Leyla stands.

Leyla 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.

Leylas before her.

Real people
Leyla Aliyeva
Azerbaijani public figure.
born 1985
In fiction
Layla
Heroine of the 7th-century Arabic love story Layla and Majnun.
Arabic literature

Names connected to Leyla.

The number behind Leyla.

1

The Leader

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Leyla reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.