Leslie

Where the name comes from

• Scottish (place name)
  Origin uncertain. The name comes from a place in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The place name's own meaning is unknown.
  Lesslyn (earliest recorded form of the place name)
  Leslie began as a Scottish family name taken from a barony in Aberdeenshire. That barony was first recorded about 845 years ago as Lesslyn. Scholars call the origin of Lesslyn obscure. The town of Leslie in Fife is said to be named after the Aberdeenshire place. Some Leslie families may take their name from the Fife town instead. The family name later became a given name for boys and girls.
• Popular meaning
  "Garden of holly" (popular meaning, not proven)
  Said to be Gaelic leas celyn or lios cuileann
  Many baby-name books and websites say Leslie means "garden of holly" or "holly garden." This idea is widespread, but family-name dictionaries call the place name's origin obscure. Treat "garden of holly" as a popular meaning, not a proven one.
• English (surname only)
  From a medieval English woman's name
  Middle English Lecelin, a double diminutive of Lece
  Some English families named Leslie may get their surname from a medieval woman's name, Lecelin. This applies to the surname only. The given name Leslie comes from the Scottish family name.

Leslie across traditions

• Scottish. Leslie is the name of a major Scottish noble family. It took its name from its lands in Aberdeenshire. Members of the family were prominent soldiers in the 1600s.
• United States. In the US, Leslie was mostly a boy's name before the 1940s and mostly a girl's name afterward. Popularity: highest for girls in the 1960s through early 1980s, peaking at #56 in 1981. For boys, its peak was #85 in 1902.
• American Southwest. The writer Leslie Marmon Silko grew up at Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. She is of Laguna Pueblo, white, and Mexican ancestry and is one of the best-known people with this name in the Southwest.

Who carried it

• Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven (About 1580 to 1661): Scottish general. He led the Scottish army that fought on Parliament's side in the English Civil Wars from 1644 to 1646.
• Leslie Howard (1893 to 1943): English actor, producer and director. He played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939).
• Leslie Marmon Silko (Born 1948): American poet and novelist from Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico. Her novel Ceremony (1977) is considered a landmark of Native American literature.

Forms in other languages

Lesley, Lesly, Lesslie, Lessley, Les

Leslie in letter-number systems

Hebrew, Greek and other traditions gave every letter a number, and read meaning into the totals. These are the counts, computed; the readings are inside the Innerverse.