girls:
10.7k births since 1956
#1522 (73rd percentile)
boys:
9k births since 1893
#1243 (73rd percentile)
overall:
19.7k births since 1893
#1829 (76th percentile)
The name Leighton is the #1,829 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 19,705 recorded births since 1893. This represents the 76.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 76.4% of all names). For girls, it ranks #1,522 (73.4% percentile) for all time with 10,718 births since 1956. For boys, it ranks #1,243 (72.9% percentile) for all time with 8,987 births since 1893.
Leighton first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1893 (1893 for boys and 1956 for girls). Birth data for Leighton is available in 121 out of the 131 years between 1893 and 2023 (121 years for boys and 43 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 Leighton is truly gender-neutral, with nearly equal distribution between boys and girls. In 2023, 78.6% of babies named Leighton were girls. Interestingly, until around 2009, the name was more popular for boys (86.9% boys from 1893 to 2008), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (72.5% girls from 2009 to 2023).
For girls, Leighton reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 64.8% percentile (ranked #334) with 486 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 486 births per million (ranked 64.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2004, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Leighton is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #334 (64.8% percentile) with 486 births per million.
For boys, Leighton reached its peak popularity in 2019, achieving the 36.4% percentile (ranked #584) with 190 births per million. The name was most common in 2019, with 190 births per million (ranked 36.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2004, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Leighton ranks #687 for boys (24.6% percentile) with 126 births per million, which is 66.2% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Leighton".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Leighton.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Leighton", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Leighton.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Leighton. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Leighton is pronounced as LAY-tuhn, which has 2 syllables.
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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 EY1 T AH0 N) 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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