Lola
- Pronunciation
- [Lo-la]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Feminine Form Of Carlos Manly: Abbreviation Of Dolores Full Of Sorrows.
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Lola
Lola is the Spanish short form of Dolores (Spanish for "sorrows" — referring to the Catholic devotion of "Our Lady of Sorrows," Mary's seven sorrows). The shortening developed from Lolita (the Spanish diminutive of Dolores) into the simpler Lola. The name has been used continuously in Spanish-speaking countries for centuries.
The name's most influential modern cultural anchor is fictional: the seductive-cabaret character Lola in the 1930 German film Der blaue Engel ("The Blue Angel") and Marlene Dietrich's iconic performance. Other notable cultural Lolas include the Kinks' 1970 hit "Lola" (with the famously transgressive twist about the title character), the Damn Yankees musical "Whatever Lola Wants" (1955), and the contemporary Disney character Lola Bunny of Space Jam (1996, 2021).
The contemporary American Lola surge is part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Sadie, Maggie, and Hattie. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2000 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 200 since. The name's appeal is its compact playful register — two short syllables, the alternating L-O-L-A consonant-vowel pattern that gives the name a distinctive musical quality, and the in-built cabaret-and-pop-culture register. The name reads as both vintage-classical and contemporary American with a slightly cheeky Spanish-influenced edge. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Lo, Lo-Lo, and the rare LoLo each occasionally appear; the longer formal Dolores is sometimes used as Lola's official-document version. International forms include Lola (essentially identical across European languages) and the related Spanish Dolores.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lola
US Popularity History (1904–2025)
Annual US births named Lola by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2013 with 1,493 girls named Lola (girl rank #213 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #275 for girls (1,132 US births). That's 62 places below its 2013 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Lola Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Lola the strongest states are North Dakota, Utah, Minnesota.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | #141 | 48 |
| 2 | Utah | #150 | 277 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #165 | 314 |
| 4 | Rhode Island | #166 | 38 |
| 5 | Maine | #180 | 28 |
| 6 | South Dakota | #187 | 40 |
| 7 | District of Columbia | #194 | 38 |
| 8 | Michigan | #198 | 426 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #200 | 252 |
| 10 | Missouri | #203 | 289 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Virginia | #384 | 214 |
| 2 | Nevada | #377 | 69 |
| 3 | South Carolina | #355 | 135 |
| 4 | New Jersey | #349 | 219 |
| 5 | Texas | #339 | 906 |
| 6 | Connecticut | #328 | 94 |
| 7 | Maryland | #315 | 173 |
| 8 | Georgia | #308 | 328 |
| 9 | Mississippi | #301 | 100 |
| 10 | Alabama | #301 | 155 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lola in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lolita | Feminine Form Of Carlos Manly | Female | Spanish |
Looking for names like Lola?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Lola to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lola against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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