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Given to both sexes · 394,690 recorded births

Leslie

#712 in the US in 2025

Where Leslie stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#712girls’ names · US 2025

Leslie was the 712th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 393 births.

peak 1957 · 6,103188019532025

Its moment was 1957, when 6,103 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#712US rank, 2025 (girls)
393US births in 2025
#56its best US rank, in 1981
1957peak year — 6,103 births
270,429US births since 1880
382NZ births since 1917
22E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Leslie's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Leslie was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Leslie in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0173346
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Leslie in the United States, 1880–2025
girlsboys

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 46% as a share of girls' births.

Leslie is given to both sexes: 270,811 female and 123,879 male births on record. The two curves rarely move together, which is why they are drawn separately rather than summed.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Leslie in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Leslie has been registered 382 times since 1917, peaking in 1953 with 27 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

19001920194019601980200020200.010322064
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Leslie in New Zealand, 1900–2025
girlsboys

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Leslie in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Leslie was registered 22 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2024 with 10 births. It ranked #3,683 for boys in 2025 on 5 births.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.01.83.6
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Leslie in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#6288
1890#57820
1900#63930
1910#57052
1920#75792
1930#600132
1940#427254
1950#1342,329
1960#925,242
1970#645,622
1980#614,776
1990#1152,827
2000#903,623
2010#1991,565
2020#595488

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Leslie most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California43,411
Texas26,884
New York19,169
Illinois13,153
Ohio10,817
Pennsylvania10,533
Florida8,048
Michigan7,932
Georgia7,157
North Carolina7,024

Questions about Leslie

How popular is the name Leslie?

Leslie ranked #712 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 393 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Leslie most popular?

Leslie peaked in 1957, when 6,103 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Leslie rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Leslie has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-46%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1957, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.