Leila, Leila, Leila

Ooh, like the song “Layla”? The first time I heard this was in high school and I was confused. The only songs I knew with my name in them were in Arabic, so I think to myself, No way, I’m definitely missing something. Finally, somebody elaborated and mentioned “Layla” by Eric Clapton. Mind you, I had never heard of Eric Clapton (I grew up in the 90’s) so that didn’t shed much light except that I could now look up the song. I didn’t even bother to listen to the song until people kept making the reference and I was tired of being out of the loop. Well, I’m not much of a rock fan and it didn’t really make a difference; if somebody refers to a song called “Layla,” I immediately think of the Arabic version, which is really a lot more fun in my opinion:




When I was a fetus in my mother’s womb, my mother dreamt that she was holding a baby girl named Leila. So my parents named me Leila. I have always loved my name. When people say, “Oh, what a pretty name,” my internal response is I know, I love it. But I don’t like to gloat – I really had nothing to do with my name – so I merely reply with a demure ‘Thank You’.

I’ve seen my name spelled a lot of different ways: Leila (that’s me), Layla, Lila, Lela, Laila, and (I was recently surprised to see) Leighla. I suppose ‘Layla’ makes the most sense because that’s how my name is pronounced – people tend to pronounce ‘Leila’ as Lee-la or Lie-la. Even Arabs can mispronounce my name by saying Leh-la, which I don’t like it because it’s said in what I can best describe as a Syrian drawl. The proper way is Lay-la and Arabs have no excuse butchering it. Also, the Arabic ‘L’ is pronounced much lighter than it is in English (I don’t know how I can explain this any further).

Enough about pronunciation, the good stuff is always in the meaning. When my mom had my younger siblings, picking out a name was always a very big deal. My mom is vey picky about the names and she thinks of how the name sounds, the meaning, how it fits with the rest of our names, possible nicknames (if the kid's going to be teased), etc. Thank God my mom is so picky because I think we all ended up with nice names.

Back to my name :) Leila originates from the word layl, which means ‘night’ in Arabic. (Cute sidenote: my sister Sana’s name means light. One day she tells me, “You’re night and I’m light.” Rhyming opposites... interesting.) In Ancient Arab traditions, it is known that something of great value is given many names. One of those names was Leila. So my name was used in poetry to refer to things that were precious to the Arabs like the Ka’bah (a sacred site for Muslims). There is also a famous story about two lovers, Qays and Leila. Qays is nicknamed Majnoon Leila, literally Crazy-about Leila. Before I was aware of any of these references, I knew that I was famous because in the Arabic version of "Little Red Riding Hood," the little girl’s name is Leila. The story is called "Leila and the Wolf." You can guess my favorite childhood story.