Convert Hand (hand) to League (lea) instantly.
About these units
Hand (hand)
The hand is a traditional unit of length equal to 4 inches, historically used to measure the height of horses. Its origins go back thousands of years, when people commonly relied on body-based measurements. While early hands varied from culture to culture, the modern standardized hand—set at exactly 4 inches—was adopted to bring uniformity to equine measurement worldwide. When measuring a horse, the height is taken at the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades, because this location provides a stable and consistent point unaffected by head movement. Horse heights are often written in a mixed-unit style: for example, "15.3 hands" means 15 hands plus 3 inches, not 15.3 × 4 inches. Though rarely used outside the world of horsemanship, the hand has become deeply embedded in equestrian culture. It provides a system that is intuitive, easy to visualize, and respectful of longstanding tradition. In modern times, even highly scientific equine breeding and veterinary studies continue to quote measurements in hands.
League (lea)
The league is an old unit of distance whose length varied widely across cultures, usually somewhere between 2.4 and 5.5 kilometers. Historically, it represented the distance a person could walk in an hour. Maritime and overland leagues existed, further complicating the unit's consistency across regions. In literature—particularly in adventure writing such as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas—the league became a poetic and evocative measure of great distances. Even when not scientifically precise, its cultural and narrative resonance helped cement its place in storytelling. Though obsolete in modern measurement, the league remains an evocative relic of pre-industrial travel, when human endurance served as a baseline for measurement.