Comments for the name Leila

A famous (or infamous) Leila is Leila Khalid, the Palestinian hijacker.

Another famous bearer is Leila Forouhar, an Iranian singer.

This name is so awesome! I am afraid to name my daughter Leila though only because I like it pronounced "Lee-lah" and I am afraid she would always be called "Layla" or "Lie-lah". The meaning is so beautiful, love it!

I prefer it spelled Layla and pronounce it LAY-la, and Lila and pronounce it LIE-la.

Leila reminds me of the one eyed alien girl off 'Futurama'.

That one-eyed girl on Futurama is Leela not Leila and a famous bearer is Leila Mckinnon an Australian tv representer.

I'm not sure but I think it means Love in Urdu. I'll have to check on it.

This is pretty much my name, only it is spelled Layla. I think it looks nicer as Layla, and it is MUCH easier to pronounce as Layla. My parents almost spelled my name as Leila, but they realized most people would mispronounce my name as Lee-la or Lie-la. I hate when people try to pronounce it as one of those ways. Name your kid Leela or Lyla if you want it pronounced that way. Leila is pronounced as lay-la.

But aside from that, it's a really pretty name. ^^

Think Leila is a pretty name, to me it sounds like a flower.

Leila is the main character in a famous short story by Katherine Mansfield called "Her First Ball."

'She quite forgot to be shy; she forgot how in the middle of dressing she had sat down on the bed with one shoe off and one shoe on and begged her mother to ring up her cousins and say she couldn't go after all. And the rush of longing she had had to be sitting on the veranda of their forsaken up-country home, listening to the baby owls crying "More pork" in the moonlight, was changed to a rush of joy so sweet that it was hard to bear alone. She clutched her fan, and, gazing at the gleaming, golden floor, the azaleas, the lanterns, the stage at one end with its red carpet and gilt chairs and the band in a corner, she thought breathlessly, "How heavenly; how simply heavenly!" '

This name is correctly pronounced as LAY-la. I could see how you can get LEE-la, or even LIE-la from Leila, but it's really LAY-la. Think of the Hawaiian word 'lei' when you say it, since that's embedded in the name. Lei is pronounced as 'lay,' not 'lie' or 'lee.'

If you really fancy the pronunciation LIE-la, consider the lovely name Lila. LEE-la would be Leela.

The Estonian version of this name is Leili.

Famous bearers:
Moderator/Model Leila Abbas
Singer Leila Lopez

LEILA is Arabic for 'dark' and 'born of night.'
There are FOUR ways of spelling the name:
LAYLA, LAILA, LEILA, LEYLA.
There is a woman politician called Layla Zana.

With Leila I see LIE LA not LAY LA or LEE LA. Some people say because it has the lei word like the Hawaiian lei it must be said as Lay la. Then what about the name Lorelei? Do you say that as LORE LAY? No most people say LORE LIE.

Also you have to think of the origins. It is an Arabic name. The Arabic lanuage does not use the same letters i.e. A-Z. Leila is a form of Laila. And Laila is SUPPOSED to be said like LIE LA not LAY LA. There is a book in the Quran called Lail and you say it as Liel even though it looks like Layl. I used to say it as Layl until my husband taught me the right way. And like I said they use a different alphabet system so it is not a direct translation. There could be more than one way to tanslate it. Same with Russian to English and others.

But I would never use the spelling Laila for my daughter if I wanted LIE LA. In the U.S. Laila would be said LAY LA 98% of the time.

Lila, at first glance, I say LEE LA like Dina DEE NA.
Lilah I thought was LIE LA like Dinah DIE-NA. But everybody says LIE LA for Lila.

Back to Leila. If you look at it from an Asian point of view it could be LAY LA. If you look at it from a German point of view it would be LIE. But from an Arabic view it is LIE LA.

Leila is also borne by a very famous Ukrainian belly dancer. Although her real name is Alla Kushnir, she's also known as Leila, which means "night."

This is my favorite spelling of Layla/Laila/Leila/Leyla, pronounced LAY-luh. I just think it looks absolutely beautiful, and sounds very elegant. I particularly like the combination Leila Rose (Rose being a family name, and my middle name).

Leila Buchanan is one of the main characters on the great new TV sci-fi drama "The Event". Leila is a young woman whose family gets pulled into a government conspiracy.

I love this name. It's nice because of the 2 L's, and L is a very delicate letter.

Remember that there are phonetic differences in languages. Just because it's pronounced differently doesn't mean it's wrong.

Personally, I think LEILA should be pronounced LEE-lah. I'm not sure about other languages, but at least in English, there is a separate spelling, LAYLA and is pronounced LAY-lah. (In English, we tend to use pronunciations from different languages).

This is my favorite spelling of this name and I like it better pronounced lie-lah.

This name is also common in Iran.

My name is Leila, and I really like it. The original pronunciation is Layla; that's how this name is supposed to be pronounced. Though I was named for the Eric Clapton song Layla, my parents decided to go with the original spelling of the name because of where we would be living. Now that I live in the states, though, I get called LEE-la a lot when people read my name. It's not really bad, and I don't mind correcting them, but it can get a little frustrating just because you want people to know your name the way it is. But I really like my name either way; it's not common at all!

This is my favorite spelling, because its the only one that had been used consistently through time, unlike Layla (which looks too childish and similar to the awful name Kayla) and Laila, which is used more predominantly in modern times. I tend to prefer traditional spellings, so Leila is my favorite :) I like the pronunciations "lay-la" and "lie-la", so it'd be hard to choose which one I'd say! Also I think the pronunciation is about 50/50 and that could get confusing when different people are calling you different things.

It is of Arabic origin, and the meaning of Leila is "night beauty". Used by authors for the names of exotic female characters in the early 19th century.