Is Leighton a male or female name?
Leighton is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in United States at 56% and male usage in England and Wales at 99%. Country context changes the answer.
Result without a country hint
This is the response used when the request does not supply a country. It is a fallback, not a claim that every country has the same distribution.
- Association
- male
- Probability
- 57%
- Sample size
- 28,171
- Confidence
- high
Leighton by country
Only sources that publish observation counts appear in this table. The probability is the dominant-gender share within that country source; sample sizes from different countries cover different years and should not be treated as population rankings.
| Country | Association | Probability | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States US | female | 56% | 20,709 | ssa |
| England and Wales GB | male | 99% | 5,837 | ons |
| Canada CA | female | 53% | 1,292 | statcan |
| Ireland IE | male | 100% | 319 | cso |
| Poland PL | male | 100% | 6 | pesel |
| France FR | male | 100% | 5 | insee |
Attested in 9 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AU · BE · CA · CH · FR · GB · IE · PL · US
Leighton over time
In the United States, 0% of the babies named Leighton in the 1910s were girls, against 75.1% in the 2020s. The name has changed sides over time, so the answer depends on when a person was born.
| Decade of birth | United States: girls | Babies |
|---|---|---|
| 1910s | 0% | 247 |
| 1920s | 0% | 440 |
| 1930s | 0% | 349 |
| 1940s | 0% | 423 |
| 1950s | 2% | 389 |
| 1960s | 0% | 308 |
| 1970s | 0% | 389 |
| 1980s | 9% | 606 |
| 1990s | 19% | 1,185 |
| 2000s | 42% | 2,237 |
| 2010s | 72% | 8,640 |
| 2020s | 75% | 5,444 |
Births per decade from the US Social Security Administration (1880–2024) and INSEE (France, 1900–2025); decades with fewer than 100 babies are left out. See boys' names that became girls' names and French names that changed sex.
Look up Leighton with a country
Send a reliable two-letter country code when you have one. Preserve probability, sample size, confidence and source with the category.
curl "https://namegender.com/api/v1/gender?name=Leighton&country=US" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ng_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx"Copy failed. Select and copy the text.
Method and limits
Counted rows come from national registration sources that publish male and female totals. The attested-country list also includes sources that confirm presence but do not publish a sample size. Those two evidence types are kept separate.
Name data describes a population-level association. It does not identify an individual person's gender. Preserve unknown and low-confidence results, and do not use name inference for employment, medical, financial, insurance, legal or eligibility decisions.
Data version: 2026.10. Read the benchmark methodology and database provenance before applying a threshold.
Questions about Leighton
Is Leighton a male or female name?
Leighton is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in United States at 56% and male usage in England and Wales at 99%. Country context changes the answer.
Why can the result for Leighton change by country?
A name can have different observed distributions in different populations. A country hint narrows the evidence used by the API instead of treating one global result as universal.
Does the name Leighton identify a person's gender?
No. This page describes statistical associations in name records. It cannot identify an individual person and should not be used for consequential decisions.