Leland

L1E1L1A1N1D2
/ˈliːlənd/

proper noun

A surname from Irish.

Less commonScrabble 7

Meanings

proper noun
  1. A surname from Irish.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname.

    On Feb. 10, on the third floor of the Social Security Administration’s Baltimore-area headquarters, Leland Dudek unfurled a 4-foot-wide roll of paper that extended to 20 feet in length.

    2025 September 8, Eli Hager, “The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security”, in ProPublica
    2 more examples

    The old man, busy with expanding his logging operations, took no special notice of the blessed event other than christening the boy Leland Stanford Stamper in what he considered a favor to his young wife; he stomped into her room in Wakonda, calk boots and all, trailing sawdust, mud, and the stink of machine oil, and announced, “Little honey, I intend to let you call that boy there after that school you're forever mooning about quittin'. How does that strike you?"

    1960, Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion, Penguin, published 2006, →ISBN

    With a name like Leland, he was doomed. He looked like the kind of kid who'd been tormented by his schoolmates since the first day of school, too bright and too big to avoid the involuntary cruelties of other middle-class children.

    1992, Sue Grafton, I is for Innocent, Pan Macmillan, published 2010, →ISBN
  3. A number of places in the United States:

Origin

  1. IrishMac
  2. EnglishLeland

Shortened from McLeland, McClellan, from Irish Mac Giolla Fhaoláin, "son of servant of (Saint) Faolán (=Little Wolf)".

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with Leland

All rhymes →

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

Leland. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Leland

MLA

“Leland.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Leland. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Leland,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Leland.

Source: Leland on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.