Nicknames for Layla
27 ideas for Layla — the short forms people actually use, plus cute, funny and gamer versions. Copy any of them in one click.
- Lay the everyday clip
- Lay-Lay the doubled affectionate form
- Lala the softer doubling
- Ley the alternative spelling of the clip
- Lulu the family pet form
- Lay-Bug family pet name
- Leila the Persian spelling
- Laila the Arabic and Scandinavian spelling
- Leyla the Turkish and Azeri form
- Lejla the Bosnian spelling
- Layli the Persian affectionate form
- Lila the close cousin name, often shared
- Laylo the Central Asian form
- Lay-Rose the compound, said whole
- Layla-Mae the Southern double name
- Lay-Bear the usual affectionate pattern
- L initial only, in group chats
- Lay-Z the pun, and it is always made
- Night what the Arabic layl means
- Clapton the song joke, older relatives only
- Layls the friend version
- Laylee the extended spelling
- Lay-Lo the compact friend form
- Majnun for the one everyone is besotted with
- Laylita Spanish-flavoured affectionate form
- Lucky Layla Shares the "L" sound with Layla.
- Lunar Layla Shares the "L" sound with Layla.
About the name Layla.
Eric Clapton took the title from a twelfth century Persian retelling of an Arabic love story, in which a poet goes mad for a woman of this name and is called Majnun, the possessed, for it. The 1970 record put a small spike of American Laylas into the birth records, and then the name went quiet again for thirty years. The Arabic word means night, and the sense is of dark hair or a dark, still evening. The second wave, from the early 2000s, is many times larger than the first and owes nothing to the song. That double hump is unusual and shows plainly in the data.
The two l sounds either side of a long a make this one of the smoothest names in common use, which is presumably why a song built on it works so well. It reads modern in America and traditional across the Arabic-speaking world. Lay-Lay is the affectionate doubling; Lala belongs to small children.
Most popular around 2010. Based on US birth records.
- Origin
- Arabic
- Meaning
- night
- Syllables
- Lay·la
- Used as
- a girls’ name
Layla around the world.
These are the real forms Layla takes in other languages, which often make excellent nicknames in their own right.
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Laila
Arabic
-
Leila
Persian
-
Leyla
Turkish
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Laila
Swedish
Famous people called Layla.
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Layla Moran
British Liberal Democrat MP
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Layla El
British professional wrestler
Questions about the name Layla
Layla, Leila or Laila? +
All three transliterate the same Arabic word and all are correct. Layla is the dominant American spelling. Leila is the older English form, used by Byron in 1813. Laila is standard in Scandinavia and across much of the Arab world. Turkish writes it Leyla.
What does Layla mean? +
Night. The association is with dark hair and dark eyes, and in the classical poetry the name carries a sense of intoxicating darkness rather than gloom. It is one of the oldest continuously used female names in Arabic, attested well before the seventh century.
Is the name only known from the song? +
Not at all, though the song is why many Americans recognise it. The story of the mad poet and his beloved predates the record by eight hundred years and is foundational across Persian, Turkish and South Asian literature. Clapton borrowed a name that was already famous.
What are the short forms? +
Lay is the standard clip and Lay-Lay the doubled version. Lala turns up in early childhood and rarely lasts. The name is short enough already that many families never shorten it, and Arabic-speaking households almost never do at all.