Finley here, Paisley there: the names that end in ley

In 1935 one American girl in 26 was called Shirley. It was the second commonest girls' name in the country that year, and in 1880 it had been 671st. Fifty years later one girl in 34 was called Ashley, a name that was 772nd in 1964. Shirley is not in the American top 1,000 now. Ashley is 164th. But the ending they share has never been bigger. In 2017, the newest year we hold a full American count for, one girl in 18 had a name ending in ley, leigh or lee: 94,473 girls, across 1,485 spellings, led by Riley, Paisley, Kinsley, Hailey and Kaylee.

Britain has the ending too, and gives it to the other sex. In England and Wales in 2025 one boy in 42 had a name ending in ley: Finley 18th, Oakley 33rd, Riley 83rd, Stanley 97th. One girl in 131 did, and not one girls' name with the ending made the top 100. In America it is the girls' ending by five to one. Here it is the boys' by three to one.

How we counted

A name counts if its last letters, as the official file spells it, are l-e-y, l-e-i-g-h or l-e-e. That is spelling, not sound. Emily, Lily, Kimberly, Kelly and Everly end in ly and are not counted, and we give their figures below so you can add them back if you disagree. The bare names Lee and Leigh are the ending on its own and are left out. Double names like Tommy-Lee and Ivy-Leigh are left out too, because their second half is the name Lee, and they have their own article. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists in the files, never from our catalogue's flag. There is no hand list: the rule is the last three letters, and that is all.

The American series from 1880 to 2008 counts the top 1,000 names each year, so it is a floor; the full American files for 1990 to 2017 and the English and Welsh file for 2025 count every name. American counts are from 2017, the newest full count we hold. The American rankings run to 2025.

Nobody, then Shirley, then Ashley, then everybody

In 1880, 0.2 American girls in every 1,000 had a name ending in ley, leigh or lee. One girl in 4,500. There were three such names in the top 1,000, and the biggest of them was Shirley, at 671st. Shirley climbed for fifty years: 322nd in 1900, 56th in 1920, 17th in 1925, 9th in 1927. Then it went from 9th in 1933 to 4th in 1934 to 2nd in 1935, and in that one year it was given to 39 girls in every 1,000, one in 26. The ending as a whole stood at 44 per 1,000, one girl in 23, and Shirley was 97% of it. There was no second name. Beverley was the next one up, at 342nd.

Shirley fell as steeply as it rose: 9th in 1940, 19th in 1950, 70th in 1960, 198th in 1970. By 1976 the ending was back to 5.8 girls per 1,000, one in 172, its lowest since 1921. Then Ashley did the same thing. 772nd in 1964, 40th in 1980, 4th in 1983, 2nd from 1985 to 1990, 1st in 1991 and 1992. In 1987 it was 29 girls per 1,000, one in 34, and 80% of the ending's babies. The ending peaked at 46 per 1,000, one girl in 22, two points above where Shirley had taken it 52 years before.

The third wave is different. Ashley fell to 18th by 2008 and is 164th now, and the ending did not fall with it. It kept climbing: one girl in 27 in 1990, one in 23 in 2000, one in 20 in 2008, one in 19 in 2010, one in 18 in 2017. What changed is how the babies are spread. In 1990 there were 258 spellings and Ashley was 65% of them. In 2017 there were 1,485 spellings and the biggest, Riley, was 7%. Riley, Paisley and Kinsley together are 16%. The ending outlived its names.

American boys never had it

The boys' line on the chart is flat. In 129 years the ending never fell below 5.1 boys per 1,000 (1946) or rose above 9.9 (1915). One boy in 100 to one in 200, every single year, while the girls' figure went from one in 4,500 to one in 22. The names changed underneath it. Charley led the boys in the 1880s, 59th in 1880. Stanley led from 1893 to 1959 and was 34th in 1915. Bradley led from 1960 to 1999, 47th in 1970. Riley led from 2000, and Bentley led the full files in 2010 and 2017. None of them was ever a top-30 name. In 2017 one American boy in 90 had the ending, the most in any year we hold, and that is still a fifth of the girls' rate.

Britain has it the other way round

In England and Wales in 2025, 6,571 boys had a name ending in ley, leigh or lee, one in 42, and 1,929 girls, one in 131. Of every hundred British babies with the ending, 77 are boys. Of every hundred American ones, 82 are girls. Four of the boys' names are in our top 100: Finley (1,733 boys, 18th), Oakley (1,377, 33rd), Riley (619, 83rd) and Stanley (536, 97th), with Marley (395) and Harley (366) behind them. The biggest girls' name with the ending is Riley, 270 girls and 186th, then Miley 220 and Paisley 207. Only ten girls' names with the ending were given to 50 or more girls here. In America, 25 were given to 700 or more.

It is the same names, swapped. Riley: 6,343 American girls to 1,454 boys; 619 British boys to 270 girls. Finley: 1,859 girls to 1,284 boys there; 1,733 boys to 6 girls here. Oakley: 653 girls to 610 boys there; 1,377 boys to 29 girls here. Bailey: 2,420 girls to 141 boys there; 178 boys to 52 girls here. Hadley: 2,691 girls to 35 boys there; 56 boys to 35 girls here. We found the Finley and Oakley part of this in the article on names that are girls' in America and boys' in Britain; what we did not know then is that it is the whole ending, not a few names.

Every name with 300 or more babies in England and Wales or 2,000 or more in America, for either sex. The ONS file leaves out names given to fewer than three babies and the SSA file names given to fewer than five.

Per head, the boys' ending is 2.2 times commoner here than there and the girls' is 7.2 times commoner there than here. Oakley is 15 times more British as a boys' name, Marley 12 times, Stanley 10, Finley 9, Bailey 8.5, Harley 6. The two big American boys' names go the other way: Wesley is seven times more American and Bentley 17 times, with 3,796 boys there and 33 here, and Brantley, 2,320 American boys, does not appear in the English and Welsh file at all. Among the girls, Kinsley is the extreme: 4,035 American girls and seven here. Kaylee is 36 times more American, Ashley 15, Hadley 11, Hailey 5, Riley and Paisley 3.5. Miley is the one girls' name with the ending that is clearly more British, 220 girls here against 285 there, five times commoner per head.

Leigh here, lee there

When parents on either side write the ending some other way than ley, they pick different letters. In America in 2017, 56% of girls with the ending had ley, 30% had lee and 14% had leigh: Kaylee 3,390, Rylee 2,847, Brynlee 1,408, Charlee 1,154, Paislee 1,041 against Ryleigh 1,845 and Everleigh 803. In England and Wales 80% had ley, 13% had leigh and 7% had lee. Everleigh has 98 girls here and Everlee eight. Kaylee, the fifth biggest of the American spellings, has 14 girls here. The lee spelling has grown in America: 11% of the ending's girls in 1990, 32% in 2008, 30% in 2017. Boys in both countries write ley and almost nothing else: 94% there, 99% here.

One name shows the whole picture. Hailey had 3,691 American girls in 2017, Haley 937, Haylee 520, Hayley 492, Hailee 308. Here it is Hailey 115, Hayley 83, and the rest under ten. Britain uses two spellings of a name; America uses five, and the fourth American spelling is our second.

Since 2017

The full counts stop in 2017. The American rankings run to 2025, and they say the girls' wave has turned. The number of girls' names with the ending in the top 1,000 rose from 64 in 2015 to 71 in 2018 and has fallen every year since, to 53. Five were in the top 100 in 2015; three are now, Riley 48th, Paisley 67th and Kinsley 93rd. Riley was 22nd in 2016. Kaylee has gone from 61st to 255th, Hailey from 64th to 104th, Ashley from 86th to 164th, Bailey from 107th to 209th, Haley from 279th to 861st. The risers are the new spellings and the surnames: Oakley 613th to 156th for girls, Everleigh 610th to 194th, Wrenley from outside the top 1,000 to 159th. A count of names on a list is not a count of babies, and we say so, but 18 names leaving the top 1,000 in seven years is a direction.

The American boys' list is shrinking too, 16 names to 11, and Bentley has gone from 93rd to 215th, Brantley from 122nd to 499th, Bradley from 173rd to 403rd. The exception is Wesley, 126th in 2015 and 52nd now, up in every one of the ten years and the highest any boys' name with the ending has stood since Bradley was 47th in 1970. In England and Wales, where we hold two years, the boys with the ending fell 5.1% between 2024 and 2025 against 1.5% for all boys, and so did the girls, 5.1% against 1.8%. Finley went from 1,886 to 1,733 and Oakley from 1,432 to 1,377; Stanley was the only one of the big six to have more boys in 2025 than 2024, 523 to 536. One year is not a trend and we do not call it one.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files record what parents wrote, not what made them write it, so we do not say why Shirley went from 9th to 2nd in two years, or why America gives the ending to girls and Britain to boys. The spelling rule is a choice, and it costs us Kimberly, which was 2nd in America in 1966 and 1967, and Kelly, 10th in 1977. Spell the rule ly and the dip between Shirley and Ashley part fills; it also brings in Emily, 9,746 American girls in 2017, and Lily, 2,249 English and Welsh girls, which are not that kind of name at all. The 1880 to 2008 series counts only the top 1,000 names, so the early figures are a floor, and in the 2000s a good share of the ending's spellings sit below that line. Britain's own history is not here, because we hold two British years.

What it means for you

If you are in Britain and like the sound, it is a boys' ending here. A Finley or an Oakley will share the ending with one boy in 42 in his year; a Paisley or a Hailey will be one girl in 131, and her name will be the one everyone else gives to a boy. If you are in America it is the reverse, and the ending is at its peak: one girl in 18. The other lesson is Shirley's. A name that is one in 26 is a name with a date on it. The ending that survives is the one spread across a thousand spellings, which is where it sits now.