Irene: Meaning of Baby Name Irene

About the Name Irene

Irene descends from the Greek Eirēnē (Εἰρήνη) meaning "peace." The name's overwhelming classical anchor is the Greek goddess Eirene (Roman: Pax), the personification of peace and one of the iconic figures of Greek mythology. The name is anchored by multiple early Christian saints and by the iconic Byzantine Empress Irene of Athens (c. 752–803 CE), the iconic Empress regnant of the Byzantine Empire who restored icon veneration after the iconoclasm period.

Notable modern bearers include American actress Irene Dunne (1898–1990, the iconic American Hollywood Golden Age actress and five-time Oscar nominee); the iconic Greek-American filmmaker Irene Papas (1929–2022, the iconic Greek actress); and the iconic American Korean-American actress Irene Bedard (born 1967, the American actress who voiced Pocahontas in Disney's 1995 animated film).

Irene held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1880 through 1955 — over seven decades of consistent American popularity, peaking around 1900 at #19 in the United States. The name has receded since but remains in steady use today, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. Particularly common in Spanish-speaking American communities and Greek-American naming, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Eleanor and Adelaide. The name's appeal is its layered Greek-classical-Catholic-Byzantine pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built peace etymological register, the strong Saint Irene historical anchor, and the elegant Latinate-Greek sophistication. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and the name reads as both classical-Greek and contemporary American. Common nicknames Reni (the dominant short form, casual and warm), Reno, Rina, and the rare Iri each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Irene (the historical English-Spanish spelling), Irine, and Irena (Slavic) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Irene (essentially identical across Italian/Spanish/Portuguese), Irène (French, with accent), Irina (Russian), Irena (Slavic), and the original Greek Eirēnē.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Irene

957

Spanish baby names in our dictionary

559

Spanish female names

77

5-letter I-names in our dictionary

195

I-female names total

1883–2025

years of US SSA records (90 total)

282,438

total US births named Irene (all years)

US Popularity History (1883–2025)

↘️ Falling: Irene dropped 31 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#620 in 2020 → #651 in 2025).

Annual US births named Irene by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1921 with 10,624 girls named Irene (girl rank #18 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #651 for girls (442 US births). That's 633 places below its 1921 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.

Where in the US Is Irene 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 Irene the strongest states are California, Oregon, Washington.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	California	#360	928
2	Oregon	#479	47
3	Washington	#483	134
4	Minnesota	#483	105
5	Iowa	#503	21
6	Nevada	#521	22
7	New York	#577	281
8	Wisconsin	#600	72
9	Oklahoma	#610	34
10	New Jersey	#611	109

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Florida	#849	73
2	Missouri	#804	34
3	Tennessee	#789	43
4	Alabama	#771	24
5	Pennsylvania	#769	118
6	Indiana	#765	76
7	Illinois	#760	122
8	Arizona	#758	79
9	Georgia	#751	121
10	Ohio	#742	94

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Irene in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Ira	Descendant	Male	Hebrew

Looking for names like Irene?

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.

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Compare Irene to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Irene against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Irene vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Irene vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Irene vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Irene vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Irene vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Irene vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Irene vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Irene vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

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