girls:
40.2k births since 1912
#672 (88th percentile)
boys:
5.1k births since 1882
#1679 (63rd percentile)
overall:
45.3k births since 1882
#1153 (85th percentile)
The name Leigh is the #1,153 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 45,272 recorded births since 1882. This represents the 85.1% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 85.1% of all names). For girls, it ranks #672 (88.3% percentile) for all time with 40,165 births since 1912. For boys, it ranks #1,679 (63.4% percentile) for all time with 5,107 births since 1882.
Leigh first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1882 (1882 for boys and 1912 for girls). Birth data for Leigh is available in 129 out of the 142 years between 1882 and 2023 (123 years for boys and 111 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Leigh has been given predominantly to girls, with 88.7% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 88.1% of babies named Leigh were girls. Interestingly, until around 1948, the name was more popular for boys (68.5% boys from 1882 to 1947), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (92.0% girls from 1948 to 2023).
For girls, Leigh reached its peak popularity in 1969, achieving the 74.0% percentile (ranked #199) with 887 births per million. The name was most common in 1969, with 887 births per million (ranked 74.0% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2019, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Leigh ranks #915 for girls (3.4% percentile) with 21 births per million, which is 2.4% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Leigh reached its peak popularity in 1955, achieving the 18.5% percentile (ranked #521) with 60 births per million. The name was most common in 1892, with 68 births per million (ranked 1.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2014, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Leigh ranks #911 for boys (0.0% percentile) with 3 births per million, which is 4.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Leigh".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Lee. View all variations of Lee.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Leigh", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 5 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Lee" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Lee..
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Leigh. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Leigh is pronounced as lee, which has 1 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Leigh? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Leigh. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Leigh, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like L IY1) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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