Comments (Meaning / History Only)

It can also be a Feminine variant of Lee, which is derived from Old English Leah meaning "clearing".
https://www.behindthename.com/name/lee
Leah is an English name of Anglo-Saxon origin that means "forest clearing" or "meadow". It is pronounced Lee-uh. This is my name and its origin.
It is also the origin of the English names Lee, Leigh and Lea which also mean Meadow, as well as the -ley -ly endings to English names such as Ashley. Ashley literally means "Meadow by the Ash tree"The Hebrew name is pronounced Lay-ah and obviously was not originally spelled with Roman characters. I understand why it is so easy to mix the two up, but they are not the same name. If someone is named Lee-uh and their parents intended to give them the name found in the Torah and Old Testament, then they are mispronouncing their name.
On the other hand if their parents intended to give them the Old English name for Meadow, then Lee-uh is correct.This is not a unique concept. Take the name Hannah for instance. It is another common name found with a different spelling and pronunciation in the original Hebrew. Yet few make the mistake of thinking the common Japanese name Hana is in any way related to the name Hannah despite sounding nearly identical. The lack of confusion is due in part to the limited adoption of Christianity in Japan and perhaps because it is easy for people to recognize that the Japanese language is completely unrelated to ancient Semitic languages.
Now apply that to English please, which is a Germanic language descended from the Indo-European family and also unrelated to the Semitic languages.
It is lazy to say that the names must be the same because they sound the same and the Bible was a popular book to read. Leah existed in the British Ilses before the advent of Christianity.
Leah means "Delicate Woman" in Hebrew.
Leah is Hebrew while Lea is Latin. Don't mix those two. Leah means weary and Lea is a feminine form of Latin word Leo (lion) which means lioness.
Leah with an h is Hebrew, but comes from Assyrian origin before that, and it meant ruler. The name does not mean weary, that’s describing the Bible character with this name. Please do some research and not just a 5 second google search of the name.
A Leah is also a word that means meadow or grassland In old English.
Leah could also mean "the light of the sun" in Gaelic/Irish, other than meaning "weary" in Hebrew.
I'm a fluent Irish speaker and a native Irish woman: Leah does not mean light of the sun. That seems to be a recent "revelation" born on wikipedia and people are now accepting it as truth. The word for light is solas, and ghrian is the sun and as a user already helpfully pointed out solas na gréine is light of the sun.
Can anyone actually prove that it has a Gaelic origin? That just seems to be something someone put on Wikipedia, and now suddenly everyone is accepting it as a fact. 20 years ago, I had to research the origin of my name for a school project, and the only information I could find was that it was Hebrew for ‘weary’.
If it's spelled "Lia" and pronounced Lee-ah it means bringer of good news in Greek.
The word Leah also means an open meadow, pasture or grassland in Old English and other Proto Indo-European languages.
Overall, I think that my name is okay. I don't like the fact that it means 'weary' in Hebrew, but I still like the sound of the name. But I don't think it's an 'ugly' name.
The different meanings of the name Leah are: Celtic - Gaelic meaning: The light of the sun.
Hebrew meaning: Tired or weary.
Irish meaning: The light of the sun.
Assyrian meaning: Mistress, ruler (Mistress as in the Lady of the house).
Leah is the old name of Assyria! That's the oldest name on earth, 30, 000 yrs. It is not Italian or Greek, Hebrew or Persian!... Everything is a LIE in a christian world.. Everything comes from Assyria/Akkadia also the holy mother Maria (Mother of the Arians=Maa'Aria), she was kidnapped in Ariana/Assyria by the Greeks in ancient times.
Leah is my name.. Yes, one of the meanings is "weary". But nobody has actually looked at why it means weary. If you know the Bible story of Leah and Jacob, there is a part at the end that says "she cried so much she made God weary with her tears". That is probably not an exact quote, but you get the drift. I like my name, growing up there were hardly any Leah's about, but now it is much more popular.
Biblical name: Hebrew origin, meaning "Gazelle" which is "beauty and grace", "also worthy cow" as in the biblical days cows were very valuable and treasured.
Beautiful name that works well on a little girl or mature adult. Reminds me of someone sweet, fun loving, and adorable. Yes, it means weary, but what successful person isn't weary? Leah is a hard worker who doesn't rest on her laurels.
Also has great historical significance. In the bible, Jesus is the descendent of Leah's tribe.
In the Bible, Leah was the first wife of Jacob, and the older sister of Rachel. When God saw that Jacob did not love her as much as Rachel, he blessed Leah by giving her many children. Through her son Judah, she is one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ. It is thought that Jacob eventually grew to love and respect Leah, and the two were buried in the same tomb together.
Interestingly, in the Bible, Leah was the mother of Judah, who is an ancestor of Jesus. And if you read Genesis carefully, you'll find that Jacob held Leah in very high regard. I've read also that Leah from Genesis was not ugly (which one automatically assumes when reading that Jacob loved Rachel because she was beautiful) - the Hebrew apparently can be interpreted to mean that Leah just had weak eyes.
Someone mentioned that the meaning of Leah includes "little eyes" but there is some debate over what "little eyes" actually means. Some theologists and linguists say that it could very possibly mean that she had weak eyes, not small. Weak eyes meaning she was perhaps blind or did not have perfect sight. I believe most versions of the Bible do not use the actual term "little eyes."
I heard somewhere that this name means "to weep", but I'm not sure whether that is true or not. I've never heard it anywhere else.
Might it have a connection to the Old English for "meadow"?
No there is no way they are connected. Leah is from ancient Hebrew- much too early and much too far away!
I commented earlier on Leah's meaning. Since then, I did some more research. One of the sites I checked into was a Jewish one. It said that while Leah may mean "weary" in Hebrew (for she "wearied" of being married because her younger sister was so beautiful), Leah was really named in Chaldees - not in Hebrew - and the Assyrian use of that name means "mistress" of the manor or "ruler."
Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.) says Leah means "gazelle." My bible program says it means "weary." The "Oxford Dictionary of First Names" says Leah means "languid." Since Leah's sister, Rachel, has the meaning "ewe," "gazelle" seems likely to me. It really doesn't matter, though. Leah is a beautiful name.
I also wanted to add that my bible program also says Leah means "gazelle." I suppose it's one of those names (like Mary, Katherine) whose meaning no one really knows for sure.
Many people think the name Leah means Cow, Ewe, or Weary when in fact I have always known it to mean "Contented One."
History also contends that a meaning of this name is "cow." Note that the name Rachel, Leah's sister means "Ewe," or female sheep. Leah was considered less than pretty. She is descibed as having "small eyes," while Rachel is preferred in appearance.
Not only do I bear this name but I also know that it has an Irish Gaelic origin that means "The Light of the Sun".

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