Lea
- Pronunciation
- [Le-ah]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Mythological Goddess Of Canoe Builders
- Origin
- Hawaiian
About the Name Lea
Lea is a name of layered origins, and in Hawaiian tradition it is borne by a goddess associated with canoe builders and the forest — a fittingly grounded, nature-tied source for a name that elsewhere also echoes the Hebrew Leah. Its compact, vowel-soft sound gives it a quiet beauty that travels easily across languages and cultures, slipping comfortably between Hawaiian, European, and American settings without ever sounding out of place.
That cross-cultural reach is much of its charm. Lea reads as simple and elegant, the kind of pared-down name that feels both ancient and modern at once. Recorded variants include Leia, Leigh, and Lia, each a closely related spelling that preserves the same gentle, two-syllable lilt while offering a slightly different look — from the airy Leia to the streamlined Leigh.
Lea first entered the US Social Security top-1000 for girls in 2000 and has appeared every year since, reaching its peak in 2011 at rank #556. It held at #834 in 2024, with 324 girls given the name, and stood at #784 as recently as 2022. Having accumulated 10,364 girls across its top-1000 run, Lea is a softly enduring choice — never common, yet never slipping from view, and carrying a gentle, worldly grace wherever it goes, equally at ease across languages and continents.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lea
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Lea by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2011 with 527 girls named Lea (girl rank #556 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #848 for girls (321 US births). That's 292 places below its 2011 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Lea Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Lea the strongest states are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #409 | 404 |
| 2 | New Jersey | #448 | 168 |
| 3 | Connecticut | #500 | 37 |
| 4 | California | #546 | 605 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #602 | 64 |
| 6 | Florida | #679 | 227 |
| 7 | Illinois | #683 | 144 |
| 8 | Maryland | #751 | 58 |
| 9 | Virginia | #756 | 85 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #767 | 115 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tennessee | #996 | 27 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #929 | 40 |
| 3 | Ohio | #897 | 31 |
| 4 | Colorado | #850 | 30 |
| 5 | Louisiana | #838 | 23 |
| 6 | Texas | #833 | 329 |
| 7 | Washington | #821 | 49 |
| 8 | Michigan | #812 | 51 |
| 9 | Arizona | #805 | 51 |
| 10 | Indiana | #771 | 35 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lea in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Lea?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Lea to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lea against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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