Lilah

About Lilah

Lilah is an English name with two established routes: a spelling of Leila, from the Arabic name meaning “night,” or a short form of Hebrew Delilah. Pronounced LYE-luh, it has become much more familiar among American girls in recent years. Ice dancer Lilah Fear gives it a distinctive modern sporting association.

Leila and the night-name family

Leila is a form of Layla, the Arabic name connected with night. It became familiar in Persian as well as Arabic naming, then reached a wider English readership through literature.

Lord Byron used the spelling Leila in The Giaour and Don Juan in the early nineteenth century. Lilah is a later English variant in the wider family, alongside Lila, Lyla, and Lylah.

These spellings do not all have one universal pronunciation. Lilah’s usual English sound is LYE-luh, while Leila can also be pronounced LAY-luh or LEE-luh. The resemblance on the page therefore needs to be considered alongside the spoken form.

The Delilah connection

Lilah can also come from the ending of Delilah, a Hebrew name conventionally interpreted as “delicate,” “weak,” or “languishing.” That is a different origin from the Arabic night-name branch.

In the biblical story, Delilah discovers the secret of Samson’s strength and betrays him to the Philistines. The longer name has therefore carried a particularly vivid narrative association for centuries.

The short form Lilah keeps Delilah’s final two syllables. It can be used independently as a complete name as well as in that familiar role, so its use need not always point to the biblical character.

Lilah Fear and ice dance

British ice dancer Lilah Fear competes with Lewis Gibson. Their bronze medal at the 2025 World Championships was Britain’s first world figure-skating medal since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the world title in 1984.

The pair had already won bronze at the 2024 Grand Prix Final, becoming the first British skaters to medal at that competition. The two achievements belong to different events in the international skating calendar.

Fear and Gibson train in Montreal, working within a major international ice-dance center. Their performances have made Lilah especially recognizable to skating audiences through a bearer who uses this exact spelling.

Ice dance combines partnered skating with close attention to musical interpretation and timing. That setting gives Lilah a contemporary association distinct from the literary and biblical stories behind its related names.

Pronunciation and familiar forms

Lilah has two syllables, with stress on the first. The opening vowel is the sound in “eye,” and the final syllable is a light luh. The final h is silent.

Lila and Lyla can share that English pronunciation, while Lylah combines the y and final h. Delilah is longer, with its main stress on the middle syllable.

The full Lilah is already compact. Its repeated l sounds and vowel ending are the most noticeable features of its rhythm.

American popularity

There were 91 girls named Lilah in the United States in 2000 and 964 in 2010. The increase continued in later years.

In 2025, 1,736 girls received the name, its largest annual count in the local series. It ranked number 179, matching its best rank from 2024.

How popular is Lilah?

In 2025, Lilah ranked #179 among girls in the United States, with 1,736 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1884; its largest annual count was 1,736 in 2025. 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.