Leah

200,964 people in America carry this name — ranked #275 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation Z.

Say it LEE uh

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

L IY1 AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 200,964 2020 Census
  • Rank #275 Common
  • Per 100,000 66.5 about 1 in 1,649 people
  • As a surname 307 ranked #69,002 the other way round

What Leah means and where it comes from

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “weary”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Leah name popularity by year

236,249 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2009, with 6,798 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Leah

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Leah Maria — rhymes
  • Leah Lisa — same opening
  • Leah Amanda — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

On the way up

Leah is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Is Leah a boy's or a girl's name?

0.1% men
200,705 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The states where Leah is most common

In North Dakota the name is given 1.4 times as often as it is across the country.

  • North Dakota ×1.4
  • Minnesota ×1.4
  • New Hampshire ×1.3
  • New York ×1.3
  • South Dakota ×1.3

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Names built the same way as Leah

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin