What does Leia mean in Hawaiian?
Leia is a Hawaiian girl name that means child of heaven, heavenly flowers. The name comes from lei (garland, child) + a. It is pronounced LAY-ah, with 2 syllables. The stressed syllable is written in capitals.
Leia belongs with other Hawaiian names about heaven and flower.
Leia, and Princess Leia
In Hawaiian, Leia is read through lei — the garland, and by extension a beloved child, since a cherished child is spoken of as a lei worn around the neck of the family.
Almost everyone now meets the name through Star Wars (1977), which is unrelated: George Lucas's Leia has no Hawaiian derivation. The two simply coincide. If you are giving the name in Hawaiʻi the lei reading is the one that will be heard; elsewhere, expect the film.
How to pronounce Leia
Say every vowel. The vowels in Leia are e as in “bet”, i as “ee”, a as in “father”. See the full Hawaiian pronunciation guide.
Is Leia a boy or girl name?
Leia is used mainly as a girl's name, though Hawaiian itself has no grammatical gender.
How often Leia is given in the U.S.
Social Security records show 16,606 U.S. babies named Leia since 1949, but that spelling is mostly the Star Wars name, so the count says little about the Hawaiian name. In Hawaiʻi itself, 181 babies born in the state were named Leia from 1987 to 2021, with a peak of 21 in 2018. 141 were born there from 2012 to 2021.
How well recorded is Leia?
Leia is built from vocabulary recorded in Pukui–Elbert, the standard Hawaiian dictionary, but it has no entry among documented Hawaiian given names.