Lela
#2,368 in the US in 2025
Lela in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 44% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Lela in New Zealand
Lela never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #141 | 106 |
| 1890 | #127 | 304 |
| 1900 | #122 | 530 |
| 1910 | #161 | 469 |
| 1920 | #218 | 878 |
| 1930 | #259 | 586 |
| 1940 | #352 | 335 |
| 1950 | #493 | 266 |
| 1960 | #786 | 169 |
| 1970 | #961 | 132 |
| 1980 | #1,474 | 82 |
| 1990 | #1,862 | 76 |
| 2000 | #1,533 | 118 |
| 2010 | #1,536 | 145 |
| 2020 | #1,808 | 109 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Lela most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Texas | 3,304 |
| Alabama | 1,875 |
| North Carolina | 1,706 |
| Mississippi | 1,673 |
| Tennessee | 1,592 |
| Oklahoma | 1,466 |
| Illinois | 1,446 |
| Missouri | 1,398 |
| California | 1,223 |
| Arkansas | 1,171 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026