Variant of Lilith, from Hebrew/Akkadian meaning 'of the night,' a figure in ancient mythology.
Lylith is a stylized variant of Lilith, one of the oldest and most contested names in the Western tradition. Its roots reach into ancient Mesopotamia, where the Akkadian word *lilitu* described a class of wind spirits or storm demons. In Hebrew, the name connects to *layil*, meaning "night," and Lilith enters Jewish textual tradition most fully in the medieval *Alphabet of Ben Sira*, where she is cast as Adam's first wife — created from the same earth, not his rib — who refused submission and fled Eden.
That act of defiance made her a demon in ancient folklore and a feminist icon in modern culture. The name's rehabilitation across the twentieth century has been remarkable. Where earlier generations treated Lilith as a cautionary figure, the late twentieth century reimagined her as a symbol of autonomy and self-determination.
The Lilith Fair music festival (1997–1999) crystallized this reframing, centering women artists at a time when radio programmers insisted two women couldn't be played back-to-back. S. Lewis's White Witch in *The Chronicles of Narnia* (explicitly descended from Lilith) to Neil Gaiman's work, where she appears as a figure of primal, sovereign power.
The spelling Lylith softens the name visually — the doubled *l* and the *y* give it a more lyrical, invented quality that distances it slightly from the mythological weight while preserving the sound. It suits parents drawn to the name's strength and depth but wanting something that reads as uniquely theirs. On naming charts, it occupies the small but growing territory of names that feel both ancient and modern, mythological and personal.