Leah
Meaning of Leah
Leah, pronounced LEE-uh, is a concise Anglicization of the Hebrew לֵאָה (Le’áh), a term commonly glossed as “weary,” though alternative philological notes point to “wild cow,” and later Christian commentators have preferred the softer nuance “delicate”; as the elder wife of the patriarch Jacob and matriarch of six tribal progenitors in Genesis, she occupies a central locus in Jewish and Christian narrative memory, a positioning that has ensured the name’s liturgical familiarity from the Vulgate through English Reformation translations. Introduced into English usage by Puritans who favored Old-Testament nomenclature for its scriptural authority, Leah traversed periods of relative dormancy before experiencing a steady, data-verified ascent in the United States during the late twentieth century, cresting inside the national Top 50 since 2011 and settling at rank 53 for newborn girls in 2023–2024. Its durable appeal likely stems from the intersection of several factors: a phonotactically simple, bisyllabic structure that aligns with modern Anglophone preference for brevity; semantic associations that, while etymologically austere, evoke endurance and familial fecundity; and a cross-cultural recognizability that permits effortless transfer among variant spellings—Lea, Lia, Léa—without sacrificing intelligibility. As a result, Leah stands today as a historically grounded yet stylistically restrained choice, offering parents a name that is at once unmistakably biblical and comfortably contemporary.
Pronunciation
English
- Pronunced as LEE-uh (/liːə/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named Leah
| Leah Remini is an American actress best known for her roles as Carrie Heffernan on The King of Queens and Vanessa on Kevin Can Wait alongside Kevin James. |
| Leyah or Leah Chase, a New Orleans chef known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine, ran Dooky Chase, a civil rights hub and art gallery honored by Food and Wine in 2018. |
| Leah Ward Sears is an American jurist and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, the first African American woman to lead a state supreme court and, in 1992, Georgia’s first female and youngest justice. |
| Leah Maree Purcell is an Aboriginal Australian actor, playwright, director, and novelist who debuted in 1999 and went on to appear in Lantana, Somersault, The Proposition, and Jindabyne. |
| Elizabeth Leah Manning was a British educator and social reformer who served as a Labour MP in the 1930s and 1940s and led the evacuation of orphaned and at risk Basque children during the Spanish Civil War. |
| Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Canadian American poet, writer, educator, and activist whose work centers queer and trans people of color, survivors, and diasporic South Asian and Sri Lankan communities, linking colonialism, abuse, and violence, and organizing for disability justice. |
| Leah Bodine Drake was an American poet, editor, and critic. |
| Leah Simone Martindale-Stancil is a Barbadian former swimmer, a two time Olympian and the first black woman to reach an Olympic 50 m freestyle final, a Barbadian record holder, and a 12 time All American at the University of Florida. |
| Leah Gilliam - L. Franklin Gilliam is an American filmmaker and media artist focused on race, gender, and sexual orientation, formerly with the Institute of Play and Vermont College of Fine Arts, now vice president of strategy and innovation at Girls Who Code. |
| Leah Lewis - Leah Marie Liang Lewis is an American actress known for Nancy Drew, The Half of It, voicing Ember in Elemental, and the series Matlock. |
| Leah Kirchmann is a Canadian road cyclist and two time Olympian who won the 2017 world team time trial and became the first woman to sweep all three titles at the 2014 Canadian championships. |
| Leah Bracknell was an English actress best known for playing Zoe Tate on Emmerdale from 1989 to 2005, earning award recognition including a British Soap Award, and later taught yoga and designed jewellery. |
| Leah Hextall is a Canadian sports journalist and hockey play by play broadcaster who made history as the first woman to call an NCAA mens ice hockey championship game in 2019 and a nationally televised NHL game in 2020. |
| Leah Penniman is an American farmer, educator, author, and food sovereignty advocate who co-founded and co-directs Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. |
| Leah Feldman, also known as Leah Downes, was an Odesa born London based anarchist garment worker active for nearly 80 years and remembered as a last living link to the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian insurgent army, and early Jewish anarchism in the East End of London. |
