Laura

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Laura boys named Laura

By the numbers

Total US births

804,390

Estimated living today

609,000

Median age today

52

Peak year

1964

Best rank

14th

Rank in 2025

379th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

801,811 / 2,579

How old the living Lauras are

born that year still alive today

Of the 804,390 babies given the name since 1880, about 609,000 are alive — 76 in every hundred. Roughly 18,000 of them are children and 120,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin

From Late Latin saint's name Laura, from the feminine form of laurus (“laurel tree”). A post-classical name made famous by Petrarch's sonnets to Laura in the fourteenth century.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Lauras

• Laura Bush (born 1946)First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009
• Laura Chinchilla (born 1959)46th President of Costa Rica
• Laura Pausini (born 1974)Italian singer
• Laura Dern (born 1967)American actress and producer
• Laura Prepon (born 1980)American actress and director
• Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957)American children's writer, diarist, and journalist
• Laura Bassi (1711–1778)Italian physicist
• Laura Linney (born 1964)American actress

People named Laura with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Laura is most common

• CA76,491
• NY62,668
• TX56,663
• IL45,074
• OH38,189
• PA35,773
• MI32,936
• NJ23,555
• FL21,237
• MA20,723

Relative to how many babies each state records, Laura is most concentrated in Connecticut (1.3×), Alaska (1.3×), Vermont (1.3×), Wyoming (1.2×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1964

The most popular girls’ names the year Laura peaked:

• Lisa
• Mary
• Susan
• Karen
• Patricia
• Kimberly

All the names of 1964

Laura elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Laura: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Laura is most concentrated in Appenzell Innerrhoden, where 0.88% of children were given it – 34 of them.

Laura: rank by region

In 2025, Laura was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium. It has come first somewhere in 7 different years.

In 2013, Laura was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2023, Laura was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Laura was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland, and first in 4 of them. It has come first somewhere in 4 different years.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Laura appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (103rd), Province of Limburg (117th), Province of East Flanders (123rd), Province of Antwerp (149th), Province of Hainaut (187th) and Brussels-Capital Region (244th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Laura by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Laura among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Laura lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 259,183 women called Laura were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Lauren
• Laurie
• Laurel
• Laurence
• Lauryn
• Lauri
• Lauretta
• Laureen
• Laurene
• Laurette
• Launa
• Laurine

Laura against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Laura vs Lauren
• Laura vs Laurie
• Laura vs Laurel
• Laura vs Laurence
• Laura vs Lauryn
• Laura vs Lauri

Compare Laura with a name of your own