Lila
- Pronunciation
- [Li-la]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Feminine Of Lyle From The Island. Variant Of Delilah.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Lila
Lila has multiple proposed origins. The most credible Arabic line connects Lila to the Persian/Arabic lila meaning "night" — the same root as the related Layla and Laila. A separate Sanskrit line connects Lila to līlā meaning "play," "divine sport," or "creative dance" — a central concept in Hindu philosophy referring to the divine creative play of God.
The name has been used continuously in Persian/Arabic, Indian, and German naming traditions, and the contemporary American Lila surge began in the 1990s. The single most influential American cultural anchor is the literary character Lila Cerullo of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet (2011–2014, beginning with My Brilliant Friend) — one of the most acclaimed contemporary novel series, which gave the name a substantial literary register through the 2010s.
Lila's American climb is part of the broader 21st-century surge in short, vowel-rich girls' names alongside Mia, Ava, and Maya. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 1995 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 100 by 2022. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the multi-cultural etymological flexibility (Arabic-Persian-Sanskrit-German), the soft two-syllable structure, and the in-built poetic register from both the night and the divine-play meanings. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Li, Lily (a related but distinct popular name), and the rare Lalee each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Layla, Lyla, and Leila have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Lila (essentially identical across European languages), the original Arabic laylah, and the Sanskrit līlā.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lila
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Lila by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2010 with 1,969 girls named Lila (girl rank #155 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #187 for girls (1,670 US births). That's 32 places below its 2010 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 Lila 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 Lila the strongest states are Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vermont | #77 | 44 |
| 2 | Rhode Island | #124 | 72 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #142 | 371 |
| 4 | Maine | #144 | 88 |
| 5 | Connecticut | #154 | 196 |
| 6 | Montana | #155 | 37 |
| 7 | New Hampshire | #162 | 50 |
| 8 | Minnesota | #164 | 312 |
| 9 | Utah | #166 | 241 |
| 10 | District of Columbia | #168 | 66 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #339 | 91 |
| 2 | Nevada | #332 | 85 |
| 3 | Texas | #331 | 928 |
| 4 | Arizona | #315 | 213 |
| 5 | Arkansas | #304 | 103 |
| 6 | New Mexico | #299 | 52 |
| 7 | Georgia | #278 | 374 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #275 | 147 |
| 9 | California | #272 | 1,198 |
| 10 | Maryland | #268 | 203 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lila in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Lila?
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 Lila to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lila 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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