Lela

About Lela

Lela is a short name with several distinct histories. In English it can belong to the Leila family, carrying the Arabic meaning night. Georgian Lela is independent and has an uncertain meaning. Designer Lela Rose and actor Lela Rochon give the spelling familiar modern associations in fashion and film.

Different naming traditions

English Lela is a variant of Leila, part of the wider Layla family. The Arabic root means night, and the name belongs to the literary tradition of Layla and Majnun, a romance retold across Arabic and Persian literature.

Georgian Lela, written ლელა, has a different background. It may come from a plant name, but its meaning is not securely established. The Georgian name therefore has its own history alongside the English form related to Leila.

Lela also occurs as a masculine name in the Atayal tradition of Taiwan. That is another independent use of the same four-letter spelling.

Leila, Layla, Laila, and Leyla are close relatives of the English form. The Georgian and Atayal names belong to their own linguistic settings rather than to that Arabic-rooted family.

Lela Rose

American designer Lela Rose studied fine arts in Colorado before attending Parsons School of Design. Her background included painting and sculpture as well as fashion training.

She worked with designers Richard Tyler and Christian Francis Roth before presenting her own signature collection in 1998. Her professional first name then became part of the label itself.

A bridal collection followed in 2006. Her design work has drawn on color, fabric, sculptural shapes, and handworked detail, connecting the name with a particular approach to clothing rather than only with a celebrity appearance.

Rose also published Prêt-à-Party in 2015, a book combining style and entertaining. The extension into books adds another public setting in which the complete name Lela Rose appears.

Lela Rochon

Actor Lela Rochon played Robin Stokes in Waiting to Exhale. Released in the United States on December 22, 1995, the film was directed by Forest Whitaker and adapted from Terry McMillan's novel.

Rochon appeared in an ensemble with Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, and Loretta Devine. Their characters placed women's relationships and adult lives at the center of the film.

The role gives Lela a substantial connection with American cinema of the 1990s, separate from Rose's work in fashion. Both women used the compact first name as part of an enduring professional identity.

Written form and related names

Lela has four letters and a repeated l, giving it a visually balanced beginning and middle. Its two-syllable form is shorter than many of the longer names with which English readers may associate it.

Leila preserves an extra written vowel, while Layla and Leyla use y. Those differences are most useful for distinguishing the related English spellings on the page.

American popularity

Lela's best American girls' rank was 113 in 1894. Its largest annual count came in 1921, with 907 births.

There were 118 girls named Lela in 2000 and 76 in 2025, when it ranked 2,374. Its strongest American period therefore predates the modern careers of Rose and Rochon by several generations.

How popular is Lela?

In 2025, Lela ranked #2,374 among girls in the United States, with 76 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 907 in 1921. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.