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Girl · Ancient Greek
Irene
Say it: eye-REEN
Meaning
Greek eirēnē, 'peace'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Long common in the Greek East and spread to western Europe in the 19th century.
Its wave through time
Fading since the 1900s
In the United States
- 354,508 babies given this name since 1880
- At its height in 1909, about 1 in 117 girls
- 462 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- Ancient Greece800 BC to 146 BC
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
Early ChristianAncient GreekGreekEnglishFrenchSpanishItalianGermanPolishRussianAmerican
The family of the name
Other spellings: Irena, Eirene
| French | Irène |
|---|---|
| Spanish | Irene |
| Italian | Irene |
| German | Irene |
| Polish | Irena |
| Russian | Irina |
| Hungarian | Irén |
| Greek | Eirini |
Famous bearers
- Irene of Athens, 8th-century Byzantine empress
- Irene of Thessalonica, martyr of 304
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Royal and noble genealogies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- Ancient Greek literature and history (Homer, Herodotus, Plutarch and others)
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.