Layla

Meaning of Layla

Layla moves through language like a crescent moon slipping between clouds—born of Arabic lore, where her name simply means “night,” yet aglow with the silver hush of 折り紙-bright stars over Kyoto; pronounced LAY-lah in its desert cradle and LAY-luh in English gardens, she carries the soft consonant rustle of a silk yukata in early summer. She is the heroine of the Bedouin epic “Layla and Majnun,” that torch-lit tale of love so fierce it still perfumes the world, and she is the blue-note muse of Clapton’s guitar, her syllables bending like willow branches over a river of sound. In the United States her ascent has been patient and certain: once a whisper on birth records, she slipped from the distant hundreds in the late twentieth century to hover, swan-like, within the nation’s Top 40 for the past decade, her nightly glow captivating more than six thousand families at her recent zenith. Cool, lucid, and ever so lightly perfumed with myth, Layla evokes the tranquil hour just before dawn when the cicada song eases and the first pale brushstroke of tomorrow glimmers on the horizon—an elegant choice for parents who wish to cradle their daughter in the poetry of evening while sending her forth toward the promise of day.

Pronunciation

Arabic

• Pronunced as LAY-lah (/lajˈla/)

English

• Pronunced as LAY-luh (/leɪˈlə/)

• Leila
• Lila
• Lyla
• Leyla
• Leia
• Lola
• Layna