Lori

299,419 people in America carry this name — ranked #172 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it LAW ree

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

L AO1 R IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 299,419 2020 Census
  • Rank #172 Common
  • As a surname 494 ranked #46,481 the other way round

Where Lori comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “laurel”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Lori through the years

342,043 babies were given this name since 1924. The busiest year was 1963, with 23,950 of them.

20 30 40 50 60s 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1960s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Lori

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Lori Lisa — same opening
  • Lori Laura — same opening
  • Lori Isabella — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Lori has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Lori used for boys or for girls?

0.1% men
299,196 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where in America Lori is thickest on the ground

In Rhode Island the name is given 2.5 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Rhode Island ×2.5
  • South Dakota ×2.5
  • Iowa ×2.2
  • North Dakota ×2.2
  • Nebraska ×2.0

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 90.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 2.6%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 2.9%
  • Two or more races — 2.2%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.0%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names with the same rhythm as Lori

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The same name elsewhere

  • Enz Swiss
  • Lora English
  • Lenz Swiss
  • Laur Lapp.|Esth
  • Renzo Italian
  • Lovre Slov
  • Lovra Serv
  • Lorus Lith
  • Laure French
  • Laura Eng.|It.|Ger
  • Larse Swedish
  • Larry Ir
  • Lanty Ir
  • Raulus Lith

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

How Lori is spelled

Lori is how 90% of them spell it — 334,513 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin