Is Lesley a male or female name?
Lesley is predominantly associated with female records in the available name data. Without a country hint, NameGender returns female at 89%, based on 44,986 observations.
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
- female
- Probability
- 89%
- Sample size
- 44,986
- Confidence
- high
Lesley 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 | 88% | 39,065 | ssa |
| England and Wales GB | female | 100% | 4,111 | nrs |
| Ireland IE | female | 97% | 873 | cso |
| Canada CA | female | 99% | 370 | statcan |
| Spain ES | female | 100% | 215 | ine |
| Switzerland CH | female | 94% | 194 | bfs |
| France FR | female | 100% | 130 | insee |
| Poland PL | female | 68% | 22 | pesel |
| Austria AT | female | 67% | 6 | statat |
Attested in 14 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AT · AU · BE · CA · CH · ES · FR · GB · IE · IN · NZ · PL · SE · US
Lesley over time
In the United States, 20% of the babies named Lesley in the 1910s were girls, against 100% 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 | 20% | 325 |
| 1920s | 20% | 571 |
| 1930s | 38% | 582 |
| 1940s | 69% | 2,053 |
| 1950s | 79% | 3,934 |
| 1960s | 86% | 5,985 |
| 1970s | 92% | 8,348 |
| 1980s | 94% | 6,777 |
| 1990s | 96% | 4,831 |
| 2000s | 98% | 4,223 |
| 2010s | 98% | 1,123 |
| 2020s | 100% | 205 |
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 Lesley 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=Lesley&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 Lesley
Is Lesley a male or female name?
Lesley is predominantly associated with female records in the available name data. Without a country hint, NameGender returns female at 89%, based on 44,986 observations.
Why can the result for Lesley 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 Lesley 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.