Norah
Feminine · “Short form of Honora”
Norah is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 33,869 girls against 129 boys since 1880.
Norah is the Irish-inflected spelling of a name that began as an affectionate shortening and then outgrew its parent entirely. Two syllables, one open vowel, an ending that lands softly — it is easy to say across languages and has been said across quite a few. The silent h is the older, more ornamental spelling, and it has never fully gone away.
How old is the name Norah?
Norah was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Norah is a kid of about 9 — this name's wave is very recent. About 32,500 people named Norah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Norah most popular?
Norah peaked in 2017, reaching #136 nationally. Today it ranks #262, 126 places below that high. See the whole 2017 chart.
Norah appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Honoria to Norah
The story of Norah
Honora arrived in Ireland with Norman settlers and was worn down in daily Irish speech to Nóra, which English speakers wrote as Nora or, with a decorative final h, Norah. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was thoroughly established in Ireland and traveled with Irish emigration to Britain, Australia and the United States. Ibsen gave the short form its most famous literary bearer in A Doll's House, written in the 1870s, whose Nora Helmer made the name familiar on stages far beyond Scandinavia. The h-spelling has kept a steady minority following on both sides of the Atlantic ever since.
Meaningscholars disagree
Short form of Honora, from Latin honor — 'honor'
Two respectable lines meet here. Most trace Nora/Norah to Honora (Latin honor, 'honor'), which came into Ireland with the Anglo-Normans and became Nóra there. Others read it as a clipping of Eleanor or Leonora, which would carry it back through Old French to a Provençal name of uncertain sense. Separately, the very similar sound of Arabic Nura and Noor, 'light', is a different root altogether — same music, unrelated ancestry.
How the name formed
- Honoria
- Honora
- Nóra
- Nora
- Norah
Related forms: Nóra · Nora · Nóra · Honoria · Honoria · Honorine
Pronouncing Norah
NOR-ah
Stress on the first syllable. The h is silent and always has been. Some American speakers say NOH-rah with a rounder first vowel; both are standard and nobody corrects either.
Nicknames for Norah
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 20162,026 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #136reached in 2017
- Change vs 2022
- −22.6%1,191 in 2025, from 1,539
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Norah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Nóra in Irish — same name
- Nora in English — spelling variant
- Nóra in Hungarian — same name
- Honoria in Latin — related form
- Honoria in Spanish — related form
- Honorine in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Ohio. International figures from Statistics Canada. Sources
Norahs among us
people named Norah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 1,350 born in 2025 was named Norah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Norah
- #262
- Norah on the 2025 chart
- #17
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Norah went to 1,191 girls in 2025, but Nora and Noora are the same name said out loud. Together the 5 spellings went to 7,651, which makes it the 17th most-given girls’ name of the year — 245 places above the chart.
and 2 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 210 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,350 for Norah itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Yesenia test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Norah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Yesenia climbed just as high around 1987, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Yesenia's path sketches the road Norah is walking now.
Norah sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Norah is headed
Norah should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Norah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Norah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Short, two syllables, and pronounced correctly on first sight by nearly everyone — the only spelling question is whether the h is there.
- Works with little adjustment in Irish, Scandinavian, German, Hungarian and Italian settings.
- A documented record stretching back centuries in Ireland, with the short form firmly independent of Honora for generations.
- Rare enough in classrooms that a child is unlikely to share it, while remaining a name adults already recognize.
- The h will be dropped. Nora is the more common spelling in the US, so forms, teachers and coffee cups will default to it, and correcting that becomes a small lifelong habit.
- It sits in a crowded sound-neighborhood with Nora, Cora, Aurora and Noa. Expect occasional mishearings on the phone and in roll call.
- The wave behind this spelling is recent, so most people carrying it are children rather than adults — the name reads young at the moment, though that shifts as those children grow.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Norah
Feminine · #262 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Norahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 32,500 people named Norah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Norah?
- Norah is one of 3 recorded spellings. Nora is the more common one — 6,380 births in 2025 against 1,191 for Norah.
- How popular is the name Norah in 2025?
- Norah ranks #262 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,191 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Norah?
- About 1 in every 1,350 US girls born in 2025 was named Norah — 1,191 in all.
- Will my child share the name Norah with classmates?
- Norah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Norah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Aliyah#263 · Mariana#260 · Adalyn#260 · Ophelia#264 · Talia#265 · Leila#259 · Journee#258 · Aspen#266
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Norah? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Norah and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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