From the port district of Edinburgh or the River Leith, possibly meaning 'wet or flowing.'
Leith takes its name from the Water of Leith, the river that flows through Edinburgh to its port on the Firth of Forth. The toponym is ancient, likely derived from a Brittonic or old Gaelic root related to wetness or flowing — cognate perhaps with Welsh *llaith*, meaning moist or damp. For centuries Leith was a separate burgh from Edinburgh, a working harbor town with its own distinct identity, rougher and more mercantile than the capital it served.
That independence — absorbed into Edinburgh proper only in 1920 after fierce local resistance — gives the name a quietly defiant Scottish character. As a given name, Leith has been used sporadically in Scotland and among Scottish diaspora communities in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where place-based surnames-turned-forenames are common. It sits within a tradition of Scottish topographic names that includes surnames like Glen, Ross, and Kyle migrating into the given-name space.
Leith Winfield Ericson, the American actor known for Westerns and adventure films in the mid-twentieth century, gave the name a brief moment of American recognition. Leith's appeal today is in its monosyllabic crispness and its layered geography: it evokes cold northern water, maritime history, and Scottish resilience without requiring any direct ancestry to feel authentic. In an era when parents are reaching for unusual names with genuine roots, Leith offers something genuinely rare — a name that sounds invented but is older than the city it helped build.