Is Leslie a male or female name?
Leslie is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in United States at 71% and male usage in Ireland at 73%. 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
- female
- Probability
- 72%
- Sample size
- 402,852
- Confidence
- high
Leslie 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 | 71% | 382,963 | ssa |
| France FR | female | 99% | 15,610 | insee |
| Canada CA | female | 73% | 1,832 | statcan |
| Ireland IE | male | 73% | 697 | cso |
| Switzerland CH | female | 91% | 690 | bfs |
| England and Wales GB | male | 90% | 640 | nrs |
| Spain ES | female | 100% | 299 | ine |
| Poland PL | female | 52% | 91 | pesel |
| Austria AT | female | 80% | 30 | 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
Leslie over time
In the United States, 8.9% of the babies named Leslie in the 1880s were girls, against 93.2% in the 2020s. The name has changed sides over time, so the answer depends on when a person was born. In France, 84.6% of the babies named Leslie in the 1950s were girls, against 100% in the 2020s.
| Decade of birth | United States: girls | Babies | France: girls | Babies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 9% | 1,418 | — | |
| 1890s | 11% | 2,320 | — | |
| 1900s | 11% | 2,855 | — | |
| 1910s | 7% | 11,415 | — | |
| 1920s | 8% | 16,306 | — | |
| 1930s | 11% | 13,690 | — | |
| 1940s | 43% | 34,243 | — | |
| 1950s | 67% | 64,426 | 85% | 130 |
| 1960s | 80% | 68,180 | 94% | 175 |
| 1970s | 86% | 52,034 | 97% | 1,480 |
| 1980s | 91% | 42,591 | 99% | 6,000 |
| 1990s | 93% | 28,728 | 100% | 4,870 |
| 2000s | 97% | 32,018 | 100% | 1,985 |
| 2010s | 95% | 10,222 | 100% | 715 |
| 2020s | 93% | 2,517 | 100% | 200 |
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 Leslie 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=Leslie&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 Leslie
Is Leslie a male or female name?
Leslie is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in United States at 71% and male usage in Ireland at 73%. Country context changes the answer.
Why can the result for Leslie 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 Leslie 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.