Laurence
Laurence is a boy's name that peaked in 1952, when it was the 231st most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,743rd. About 18,000 Laurences are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Laurence boys named Laurence
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 40,215
- Estimated living today
- 18,000
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1952
- Best rank
- 231st
- Rank in 2025
- 1,743rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 495 / 39,720
How old the living Laurences are
born that year still alive today
Of the 40,215 babies given the name since 1880, about 18,000 are alive — 44 in every hundred. Roughly 1,100 of them are children and 8,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 the name of a third century Roman martyr, "a person from Laurentum", the place name possibly derived from laurus (“laurel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Laurences
- Laurence Olivier (1907–1989)English actor and director
- Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric
- Laurence Fishburne (born 1961)American actor
- Richard Laurence Millington Synge (1914–1994)British biochemist
- Laurence Harvey (1928–1973)Lithuanian-born British actor
- Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990)Canadian educator
- Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)American poet, novelist, and short story writer
- Laurence Doherty (1875–1919)English tennis player
People named Laurence with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Laurence is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Laurence is most concentrated in Maine (3.5×), Massachusetts (2.9×), New York (2.2×), Vermont (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1952
The most popular boys’ names the year Laurence peaked:
Laurence elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Laurence | 181,630 | 8th |
| England and Wales boys | Laurence | 3,493 | 161st |
| Ireland boys | Laurence | 2,625 | 48th |
| Belgium girls | Laurence | 708 | 143rd |
| Scotland boys | Laurence | 369 | 138th |
| France boys | Laurence | 70 | 634th |
| Belgium boys | Laurence | 17 | 713th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Laurence | 15 | 257th |
| Switzerland boys | Laurence | 13 | 1,021st |
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.
Laurence: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Laurence | 11 | 0.001% | 799th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Laurence | 2 | 0.000% | 895th |
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.
Laurence: rank by region
In 2025, Laurence was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Laurence | 484 | 10 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Laurence appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (186th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Laurence 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Laurence | 6 | 24 |
| Finland girls | Laurence | — | 9 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Laurence against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.