BabyNameScore

Mila

MEE·lah · 2 syllables

Mila is a familiar, currently well-used name.

92/100

Strong Practical Fit

Balanced across pronunciation, everyday use, lifetime fit and international use.

Name Profile

  1. Pronunciation & Spelling

    Clear, with one common misreading

    A documented English pronunciation is on file: MEE-lah. Commonly mispronounced as MY-lah instead of MEE-lah.

    91/100

  2. Everyday Use

    Low risk

    Shortens naturally in everyday use, with two established short forms.

    95/100

  3. Growing Up

    Strong lifetime fit

    Short enough to work in every register without a nickname.

    86/100

  4. International Use

    Broad international fit

    Works cleanly across the assessed languages and writing systems.

    85/100

NAME DETAILS

COMMON FORMS
Mimi
CLOSE SPELLINGS
Myla
Milla
Míla
OTHER-LANGUAGE FORMS
Мила
Міла
ORIGIN & HISTORY

About the name

The honest answer about Mila is that it depends whose Mila she is. Its best-documented life is Slavic, as the everyday short form of a large family of names built on milu — gracious, dear, kind — which includes Milena, Milada, Miloslava and Ludmila. Its meaning is inherited from those, not coined for itself. But most American parents now register Mila as a name in its own right rather than as a shortening of anything, and the spelling alone does not show which a particular Mila is. Several further origins circulate — Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Berber, Tibetan — but each is too thinly attested to present as established.

  1. Мила (Serbian/Bulgarian/Macedonian/Russian Cyrillic); Міла (Ukrainian Cyrillic). gracious, dear (via the Slavic root milu/milŭ), when the name is treated in its best-documented Slavic short-form lane. This meaning is inherited from the longer milu-root names Mila historically abbreviated, not an independently coined meaning for 'Mila' itself. As a short form of milu-root Slavic names, Mila's naming tradition traces back through long-established Slavic name families (e.g., Ludmila, attested for centuries in Czech, Polish, and Russian-speaking regions); Mila itself becoming common as an independently registered first name in the US/UK is a late-20th/early-21st-century development, not a historically old independent name.
POPULARITY

Mila over time

United States
#43RANK

Rank #43 gives national context, not a classroom forecast.

Widely recognized, but less suited to parents seeking rarity. Ranked #43 in the U.S., 2025.

SourceU.S. Social Security Administration · 2025 release

Pronunciation & Forms

SAY IT

MEE·lah

STRESS ON THE FIRST SYLLABLE

Say Mila as MEE-luh. A second reading, MY-luh, is in circulation and is the source of most of the friction around the name — it is not a regional variant so much as a genuine uncertainty, and bearers report being asked. The spelling multiplies too: Myla, Milla and Míla all exist, and Milena, Camila and Millie sit close enough to be reached for by mistake.

COMMON FORMS
  • Mimi
  • Mila-bear (informal)
CLOSE SPELLINGS
  • Myla
  • Milla
  • Míla
OTHER-LANGUAGE FORMS
  • МилаSR/BG/Macedonian/RU
  • МілаUK

Cultural Footprint

That is what a pet form usually looks like: the history accumulates on the longer name it came from, not on the short one. Ludmila has saints; Mila itself carries none of that history. Its visibility is almost entirely modern and rests on one person, the actress Mila Kunis, whose own name is a nickname for Milena rather than a name she was given. That is the situation in miniature: the most famous Mila is a short form, and the name is now being given in full to children who have nothing to be short for.

TRACEABLE ORIGIN
  1. Mila KunisUkrainian-American actress (born Milena Markovna Kunis), the name's most prominent real-world contemporary namesake
  2. Milica 'Mila' Mulroneywife of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
  3. Margaret Laura 'Mila' Hagergranddaughter of former US President George W. Bush, born 2013
  4. Leon Uris's novel 'Mila 18'notable literary use of the string, referencing a Warsaw street name

Community Impressions

In the US, Mila's public profile is inseparable from actress Mila Kunis (born Milena Markovna Kunis) — the name's SSA Top-1000 debut in 2006 coincided with the final season of Kunis's breakout sitcom 'That '70s Show' and her move into film, a timing link documented by baby-name trend writers (Appellation Mountain) rather than by SSA itself.

How this name is commonly received · not used in the score

More about Mila

FORMALITY

Functions in the US primarily as a stand-alone formal given name on birth certificates (per SSA-derived ranking data), even though in its Slavic lane of origin it is historically a diminutive/informal pet form of longer names.

Names around it

MilanaView  →
CamilaView  →
MillieView  →
MylaView  →
CLOSE SPELLING
EDITORIAL SYNTHESIS

The Decision

Mila is soft, quick and internationally legible, and it works unchanged across a large part of Europe — real assets in a family that spans languages. The counterweights. Its peak came at fourteenth in 2018, and a name that rises that fast commonly ends up marking the decade it rose in. The pronunciation is genuinely unsettled between two readings, and there is no spelling that fixes it. And there is a decision underneath the name worth making deliberately: in Slavic use it is a nickname, and registering it as a full name is a modern choice rather than a traditional one. Milena and Camila both give you Mila with something behind it, if that matters to you.

STRENGTH

A documented English pronunciation is on file. Short enough to work in every register without a nickname.

BEST FIT

Everyday Use is the strongest-scoring part of this name — no obvious nickname traps, rhymes, or initial issues detected.

FULL-NAME CHECK

See how it works with a surname.

Mila