Layla in Arabic: How to Write ليلى, and What It Means

Layla in Arabic is ليلى, pronounced Laylā. Layla is an Arabic name, so it has a fixed Arabic spelling. It has four letters: lām, yāʾ, lām and alif maqṣūra. With its vowel marks it is لَيْلَى. The name means night.

Copy the spelling you need from the table. The cells hold the plain letters of ليلى with no hidden direction marks, and the Listen button reads Laylā in your device's Arabic voice, if it has one.

Layla in Arabic calligraphy: ليلى in three styles

Three renders of ليلى, in Amiri, Reem Kufi and Aref Ruqaa, drawn straight from the font files.

How ليلى is spelled, letter by letter

ليلى has four letters, read from right to left, starting with the letter ل, lām. Every letter of ليلى joins the one after it, so the name is one unbroken shape. Arabic writes only long vowels as letters. The two short vowels are marks that everyday spelling leaves out; لَيْلَى shows them.

What does Layla mean?

Layla means night. That is the meaning our Arabic name generator gives it, and the list of Arabic girl names with their meanings repeats it with its sources.

Behind the Name gives the same meaning and the story behind its fame: Layla is the beloved of the poet Qays, called Majnun, in an old Arabic love story that the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi retold in the 12th century. English speakers took up the name after the 1970 song Layla by Derek and the Dominos, whose title came from that story.

Layla, Leila, Laila and Leyla: English spellings of ليلى

Arabic has one spelling, ليلى; English has several. Layla was one of the 50 most common names given to girls born in the US in 2024, in the Social Security Administration's 2024 national file, as copied in the usbabynames data package, and Leila, Laila and Leyla are in the US top 1,000 for 2024 as well. They are all one Arabic name. The name ends in alif maqṣūra, ى: it sounds like a long a and looks like a yāʾ without its two dots. Leila, Laila and Leyla write the same Arabic vowels in other ways, and Behind the Name lists all three as variants.

Do not build Layla from its English sound. A sound-by-sound converter turns it into لايلا, letter by letter l, aa, y, l, aa, and that is what the rule engine of our own name tool gives, marked as an estimate. Arabic already has this name, so copy ليلى.

The titles Arabic Wikipedia gives people called Layla show how Arabic writers handle the name:

The boxer Laila Ali appears under her full name, ليلى محمد علي, with her father's name, and the 1970 song is ليلى (أغنية), Layla (song). Both titles use the Arabic spelling.

Two related names on this site are Noor in Arabic, نور and Amira in Arabic, أميرة. For Arabic names to choose from, browse the Arabic girl names with their meanings, part of our Arabic vocabulary lists.

Write ليلى in more fonts and download it

Paste ليلى into the box below, or into our Arabic calligraphy generator, to draw it in 12 more fonts and save it as a PNG.

Frequently asked questions

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