Leia
- Pronunciation
- [Lei-a]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Child Of Heaven; Heavenly Flowers
- Origin
- Hawaiian
About the Name Leia
Leia has multiple proposed origins. The most credible Hebrew line connects Leia to a variant of Leah (see separate entry on Leah for the Hebrew etymology meaning "weary"). A separate Hawaiian line connects Leia to the Hawaiian word for "flower" or "child of heaven." A third proposed line connects Leia to a Greek short form of names ending in -leia.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is Princess Leia Organa of the Star Wars film series (originally portrayed by Carrie Fisher in Star Wars 1977, The Empire Strikes Back 1980, Return of the Jedi 1983, and the sequel trilogy 2015–2019) — one of the iconic female heroes of late-20th-century American science fiction. The Star Wars naming influence has been the primary driver of contemporary American Leia adoption.
Leia's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2005 to the US top 300 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. Notable contemporary bearers include various American actresses and influencers named for the Princess Leia character. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the strong Star Wars cultural anchor, the multi-cultural etymological flexibility (Hebrew/Hawaiian/Greek), and the soft two-syllable structure with vowel-rich rhythm. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Lei and the rare Le-Le each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Leah, Leiah, and Lia (a separate but related name) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Leia (essentially identical across European languages), and the broader Leah family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Leia
US Popularity History (2006–2025)
Annual US births named Leia by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2023 with 1,424 girls named Leia (girl rank #211 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #297 for girls (1,033 US births). That's 86 places below its 2023 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 Leia 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 Leia the strongest states are Hawaii, California, Delaware.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | #46 | 139 |
| 2 | California | #141 | 2,178 |
| 3 | Delaware | #161 | 24 |
| 4 | Nevada | #162 | 157 |
| 5 | New Mexico | #200 | 75 |
| 6 | Arizona | #210 | 300 |
| 7 | Florida | #214 | 774 |
| 8 | Texas | #247 | 1,214 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #288 | 264 |
| 10 | Illinois | #296 | 361 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Leia in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Leia?
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 Leia to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Leia 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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