Layla — Name Meaning in Islam

Root: ل-ي-ل (l-y-l), "night". Laylā is the intensive form of layla, a single night: the lexicographers explain it as the deepest part of the night, the darkest hour — and, by an old extension, the rapture or heady state that comes over a person, since both overtake you and both are dark and enveloping.

From the same root: layl (night as a whole), layla (one night), layālī (nights, plural), laylī (nightly), Laylat al-Qadr (the Night of Decree, which Surah al-Qadr 97 describes as better than a thousand months). The Qur'an opens al-Isra 17:1 with the night journey, using laylan, and repeatedly pairs night and day as a sign — as in Ali Imran 3:190, where the alternation of night and day is set among the signs for people of understanding.

Spellings: Layla, Laila, Leila, Leyla (Turkish), Laila (Indonesian), Laila or Laila (Urdu), Leïla (French and Maghrebi), ليلى.

Pronunciation: LAY-lā, two syllables, stress on the first. The final letter is alif maqṣūra, written as a yāʾ but sounded as a long ā, so the name closes on an open vowel rather than the short -a common in English usage.

Masculine counterpart: none in common use; Layth (lion) is sometimes paired with it by sound, but it is an unrelated root.