Luther
- Pronunciation
- [Lu-ther]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Renowned Warrior.
- Origin
- German
About the Name Luther
Luther is an Old German name built on the elements luit ("people" or "fame") and heri ("warrior" or "army"), producing the meaning "renowned warrior" or "famous in battle." It entered English use partly through German immigration and partly through the enormous cultural presence of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther — whose legacy made the name a symbol of spiritual courage and intellectual independence for many Protestant families in America and Britain. The name carries a gravitas that is hard to separate from that historical association.
Luther Martin was an American lawyer, anti-federalist delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the longest-serving attorney general of Maryland — born in Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1748 into a farming family, according to the bio on record.
Luther first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1880 — the opening year of SSA records — and peaked in 1887 at its best rank of #63. It remained in the top-1000 through 1911, last ranking at #100 with 394 births, accumulating 8,930 total tracked births across roughly three decades. That relatively modest total reflects the name's status as a respected but never mass-market choice: carried by families who valued its historical weight rather than its fashionability. Today Luther is a strong candidate for revival among parents seeking a name with genuine historical substance and a commanding sound. Its recorded variant is Lothario, an Italian cognate that carries its own distinct — and considerably more flamboyant — cultural associations.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Luther
US Popularity History (1880–1911)
Annual US births named Luther by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1911 with 394 boys named Luther (boy rank #100 that year).
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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Famous People Named Luther
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Luther.
- Luther Martin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States who helped the passage of the Bill of Rights.
Looking for names like Luther?
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 Luther to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Luther against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).