Leland
- Pronunciation
- [Le-land]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Meadow Land
- Origin
- English
About the Name Leland
Leland descends from the Old English place-name meaning "meadow land" — composed of leah (meadow, clearing) and land (land). The name first appears as an English surname referring to those from such places. The name has been used continuously in American naming since the 19th century.
Notable bearers include American businessman Leland Stanford (using Stanford as a surname, 1824–1893, the iconic American railroad baron, eighth Governor of California, US Senator, and founder of Stanford University in honor of his deceased son); American basketball player Leland Sykes; and the contemporary American actor Leland Orser.
Leland held a US top-300 boys' rank from 1880 through 1955 — over seven decades of continuous American popularity. After a long mid-late 20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing again through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Theodore and Atlas. Leland climbed back into the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built distinctive meadow-land pedigree, and the popular two-syllable -land ending. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Anglo-Saxon and contemporary American with the strong Leland Stanford American historical cultural anchor. Common nicknames Lee (the dominant short form, casual and warm — also a popular standalone name on its own), Lel, and the rare Land each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Leland and Leyland have their own SSA tracking. International variants are minimal since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Leland
US Popularity History (2005–2025)
Annual US births named Leland by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 1,029 boys named Leland (boy rank #315 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #494 for boys (612 US births). That's 179 places below its 2007 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 Leland Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Leland the strongest states are New Hampshire, Michigan, Maine.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Hampshire | #221 | 18 |
| 2 | Michigan | #231 | 405 |
| 3 | Maine | #237 | 17 |
| 4 | South Dakota | #256 | 16 |
| 5 | West Virginia | #261 | 76 |
| 6 | Kentucky | #291 | 170 |
| 7 | New Mexico | #304 | 30 |
| 8 | Indiana | #307 | 240 |
| 9 | Ohio | #325 | 338 |
| 10 | Oregon | #330 | 119 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #839 | 37 |
| 2 | Texas | #699 | 352 |
| 3 | New York | #682 | 204 |
| 4 | California | #636 | 425 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #632 | 58 |
| 6 | Florida | #616 | 245 |
| 7 | Arizona | #580 | 102 |
| 8 | Maryland | #579 | 77 |
| 9 | Connecticut | #530 | 25 |
| 10 | Colorado | #525 | 95 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Leland in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Leland?
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 Leland to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Leland against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).