Holding steady.
Popularity of Lorain since 1900
Babies named Lorain per year in U.S. Social Security records. Raw births topped out in 1928, but relative to how few babies were recorded back then, Lorain's real moment was 1907.
Data table (by decade)
| Decade | Girls | Boys |
|---|---|---|
| 1900s | 38 | 0 |
| 1910s | 144 | 78 |
| 1920s | 295 | 95 |
| 1930s | 135 | 40 |
| 1940s | 119 | 0 |
| 1950s | 145 | 0 |
| 1960s | 112 | 0 |
| 1970s | 31 | 0 |
| 1980s | 0 | 0 |
| 1990s | 0 | 0 |
| 2000s | 5 | 0 |
| 2010s | 0 | 0 |
| 2020s | 0 | 0 |
Meaning & origin
Lorain is a quietly enduring variant of the French place name Lorraine, which entered English naming usage in the late 19th century. Though it has never ranked in the U.S. top 1,000, the name reached its highest frequency in 1907 and has maintained a steady, if rare, presence since then. Its most recent recorded birth is from 2025, indicating sporadic modern use. As a softer alternative to Lorraine, Lorain carries a vintage feel that fits with early 20th-century naming styles. Its top states, if any, are unrecorded in the Social Security data, suggesting a widely dispersed but very low incidence across the country.
Lorain is a variant of Lorraine, a name derived from the French region of Lorraine, which itself comes from the Latin Lotharingia, meaning 'land of the people of Lothair'. The name was popularized in the English-speaking world as a given name in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, occasionally appearing as an alternative spelling. Its use peaked in the early 1900s and has since remained infrequent.
Nicknames & variants
Nicknames: Lori, Rain, Lora
Sibling names for Lorain
Names that share Lorain's style, for a brother or sister.
