Laila

LAY-lah

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The name Laila means “night, dark beauty, born at night.” It comes from the Arabic language tradition.

Laila (also Layla) is immortalized in the Persian-Arabic epic 'Layla and Majnun,' one of the greatest love stories in world literature. Laila represents the beloved whose beauty is so overwhelming it drives the lover to divine madness. The name captures the mystery and romance of the Arabian night.

Wiktionary treats Laila as a variant of Leila and Layla, tracing to an Arabic word related to night, and Wikipedia confirms Leila/Layla/Laila is a feminine name of Arabic origin used across the Middle East, Iran, Turkey, the Nordic countries, India, and the Anglosphere. Separately, Nordic-language Wiktionary entries describe Laila as often interpreted as a Sami name in Denmark and Finland — first recorded in Finland in 1875 and used for Sami heroines in film and literature — though they say this reading has no clear etymological proof and note it may instead just be a night-related variant of Leila or of Aila. Nothing retrieved here mentions the Layla and Majnun epic cited elsewhere.

Wiktionary records Danish use of the name since the early twentieth century and a first Finnish record in 1875.

• Laila Ali (American boxer, daughter of Muhammad Ali)
• Eric Clapton's 'Layla' (inspired by Layla and Majnun)

Sibling names that share Laila's rhythm and register without echoing it too closely.