Lila

Where Lila comes from

Variant of Leila or Lilah, depending on pronunciation; also associated with Spanish lila (“lilac”).
— Wiktionary's entry for Lila
  • Arabic
  • Sanskrit
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #254 among girls — 36 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1968
    Lila Downs born
    Mexican-American singer-songwriter
  3. 1978
    Lila Tretikov born
    Russian–American engineer, manager and former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation
  4. 2010
    Peak, #155
    1,969 babies named Lila — more than any year before or since.
  5. 2010
    The comeback
    Back to #155 after sinking to #1,495 in 1993.
In the dictionary
  • A female given name from Arabic.
  • A female given name from Sanskrit used in India.
Namesakes
  • Lila Downs · Mexican-American singer-songwriter, born 1968
  • Lila Tretikov · Russian–American engineer, manager and former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, born 1978
  • Lila Kedrova · actress, 1909–2000
  • Lila Lee · prominent screen actress of the silent film era, 1901–1973
  • Lila Abu-Lughod · Palestinian-American anthropologist, born 1952

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.