Lorraine
- Pronunciation
- [Lo-rraine]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Made Famous In Battle
- Origin
- German
About the Name Lorraine
Lorraine originates as a French regional name for the historic province in northeastern France — a territory whose name derives ultimately from the Frankish king Lothar, making it a dynastic place-name rather than a word with independent descriptive meaning. The association with "made famous in battle" reflects a folk-etymological reading of the region's wartime associations rather than a verified linguistic root; the name is more accurately understood as a transferred geographical name, much in the way that Florence or Brittany entered the personal-name register. Its French elegance and lilting three-syllable shape made it attractive to English-speaking parents in the early twentieth century.
Its popularity was concentrated in the interwar decades, when French-flavoured feminine names enjoyed considerable prestige in American middle-class homes — a reflection of the cultural cachet France held in the anglophone imagination after the First World War. No bearers of particular renown have been as closely associated with the name's rise as the social currents of that era.
In US Social Security records, Lorraine first entered the top-1000 in 1918 and rose to a peak of #39 in 1928, accumulating more than 123,000 top-1000 births before exiting the chart in 1948. Its charted span of thirty years traces a clean arc of rise and fall through the first half of the twentieth century. Recorded spelling variants include Laraine, Larraine, Loraina, Loraine, Lorayne, Lori, and Lorraina.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lorraine
US Popularity History (1918–1948)
Annual US births named Lorraine by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1928 with 5,982 girls named Lorraine (girl rank #39 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1948, ranked #96 for girls (3,745 US births). That's 57 places below its 1928 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 Lorraine 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 Lorraine the strongest states are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana.
Strongest girls-name states
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lorraine in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Laraine | Variant Of Loraine From Lorraine. | Female | English |
| Larraine | Variant Of Loraine From Lorraine. | Female | English |
| Loraina | Derived From Lorraine Which Is The Name Of A Province In France And A Family Name Of French Royalty. | Female | French |
| Loraine | Derived From Lorraine Which Is The Name Of A Province In France And A Family Name Of French Royalty. | Female | French |
| Lorayne | Derived From Lorraine Which Is The Name Of A Province In France And A Family Name Of French Royalty. | Female | French |
| Lori | The Laurel Tree Or Sweet Bay Tree Symbolic Of Honor And Victory. Old Name With Many Variants. | Female | English |
| Lorraina | Derived From Lorraine Which Is The Name Of A Province In France And A Family Name Of French Royalty. | Female | French |
Looking for names like Lorraine?
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 Lorraine to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lorraine against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).