Holiday Calendar

National Laura Day

Next celebratedWednesday, December 23, 2026

National Laura Day carries a name meaning laurel, which has been turning up in sonnets and film titles for centuries. Put the 1944 film on and stay for the song it left behind.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEDecember 23
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A 2006 start was claimed; the archive begins in 2022.

National Laura Day appears on holiday-listing sites and in social posts each 23 December. A claim that listings began carrying it around 2006 has no archival support, and the earliest Wayback capture of the main aggregator page is from 2022; no founder, proclamation or establishment record was located.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

Lara outnumbers Laura three to one in England and Wales

National Laura Day marks a name that two national registries no longer agree about. Take 2025. The Office for National Statistics counted 465 baby girls named Lara in England and Wales against 148 named Laura.

The American file runs the other way. The Social Security Administration recorded 805 girls named Laura against 409 named Lara. The same two spellings come out in the opposite order.

That split is the ground National Laura Day sits on. Nobody has ever put a name to the day itself. It circulates on holiday listing sites and in social posts, and no source behind those listings has ever surfaced.

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ORIGINS

Laura Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name arrives from the Latin laurus, meaning laurel, the leaf that made victors' garlands in ancient Rome. Behind the Name dates its use as an English given name to the 13th century. In American birth records, the first half of the twentieth century reads as a slow fade.

One year breaks that outright, and it is the largest single move in the name's own record. Nothing in the birth data itself explains it.

CHAPTER 01

The year the line turns

That year is 1945. Laura's count rose to 3,589 American girls against 2,244 the year before. The name climbed 42 places in the rankings.

Nothing else in the name's 146 years of American records comes close. The jump is not an artifact of the data, because the total number of girls in that year's file actually fell. Laura gained while the pool it was measured against shrank.

Two things named Laura were in the air. Otto Preminger's film noir Laura had opened the year before, and the song made from its theme became a classic on its own. The naming site Nancy's Baby Names credits both with the turn, though no primary record establishes it.

CHAPTER 02

Where the peak actually sits

Laura reached its best American rank in 1969, at tenth among girls' names. Counted by births alone, its biggest year was 1964 instead. Measured as a share of all the girls in the file, it was 1968.

CHAPTER 03

The spelling that took over

In 1986 Lauren outnumbered Laura in American births for the first time. Lauren took 16,684 that year against Laura's 14,172. It never trailed again.

Laura now sits outside the American top 300. That has been true in every file since 2013. National Laura Day belongs to this late stretch of the story, and no founder, proclamation or establishment record for it has ever been produced.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Petrarch first sees Laura

The Italian poet saw her in the Church of St. Clare at Avignon on 6 April, beginning the sequence that became the 366-poem Canzoniere.

Wilder publishes her first book

Laura Ingalls Wilder released Little House in the Big Woods the year she turned 65.

The name's largest single-year move

American births named Laura rose by more than half in twelve months, the biggest jump in 146 years of files.

Laura Ashley starts her business

Laura Ashley began her design business in her Pimlico home in London, and it carried more than 220 shops worldwide by her death in 1985.

Laura reaches tenth in the US

The name hit its best American rank among girls, a position it has not matched since.

Lauren overtakes Laura

Lauren outnumbered Laura in American births for the first time and never trailed it again.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Laura Day

ENDURANCE

801,811 American girls, and not one year missing from the record.

Laura appears in all 146 annual name files the Social Security Administration has published, from 1880 to 2025, and has never fallen out of the top 1,000. Across that span the files record 801,811 American girls with the name.

GENERATION

Thirty years produced half of all American Lauras

The name held a top-25 rank among American girls every year from 1960 to 1989. Those thirty years account for 53.3 percent of every girl the Social Security Administration has recorded with the name.

POETRY

Poems to a Laura perfected the Petrarchan sonnet

The Laura of the poems is known now only by that name, and she died in the plague of 1348 on 6 April, the anniversary of the day Petrarch first saw her. Britannica credits the sequence he wrote for her with establishing and perfecting the Petrarchan sonnet, one of the two principal sonnet forms and the one most widely used.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Laura Day Around the World

Austria

Laura ranked 10th among girls' names in 2024, given to 397 of the 37,463 girls born, which Statistik Austria prints as 1.1 percent

United States

the same year, 872 of the 1,620,190 girls in the Social Security Administration's file, a rank of 359th and roughly a twentieth of the Austrian share

Spain and Italy

both keep Laura's name day on 19 October

Poland, Hungary and Lithuania

all three keep it on 17 June, a date shared with Croatia

Sweden, Norway, Estonia and Finland

all four keep Laura in mid-January, 15 January in Sweden and Norway and 18 January in Estonia and Finland. These sit among sixteen Laura name days that Behind the Name lists across thirteen countries, and not one of them falls on 23 December.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Laura Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up Laura in your own birth year

The Social Security Administration publishes every American given name with at least five births in a year, back to 1880. Download the national files and find where the name sat in yours.

READ

Read the sequence Petrarch wrote for a Laura

The collection holds 317 sonnets, and it divides into the poems written during her life and those written after her death. Britannica's entry on the Canzoniere is a short way in.

WATCH

Watch the 1944 film and listen for its theme

Gene Tierney plays the woman at the centre of it, and Joseph La Shelle won an Academy Award for the black-and-white photography. Its theme came from David Raksin's score, with words by Johnny Mercer.

CHECK

Check which date a Laura abroad would keep

A name day is fixed to a calendar rather than to a birthday, and the date moves from country to country. Behind the Name's calendar shows which one each country uses.

PRINT

Print a fabric pattern by hand

Laura Ashley made her first products, placemats and scarves, with silk screens. A screen, ink and a length of plain fabric are all the method needs.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Laura Day?

1 / 8

What Latin word does the name Laura come from?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance, so it is a normal working day, and a search of the US Federal Register for the exact phrase returns no documents at all.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources
4primary records
4independently dated
Primary records
Social Security Administration2026-03
National data on the relative frequency of given names in US births
Counts for every US baby name with at least five births, yearly since 1880.
View source
Office for National Statistics2026-07
Baby names for girls in England and Wales: 2025
Every girls' name registered in England and Wales, exact spellings counted separately.
View source
Statistik Austria2025-09
Emilia und Elias beliebteste Babynamen 2024
Austria's ten most common baby names for 2024, with counts and percentages.
View source
Federal Register
Full-text search for the phrase National Laura Day
The US government's own record of published federal documents, searchable by phrase.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Laura
The Latin root laurus and the name's use in English since the 13th century.
View source
Behind the Name
Name days for the name Laura
Sixteen Laura name days across thirteen countries, listed by calendar date.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Petrarch
The 1327 meeting at Avignon and why the woman's identity was never settled.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Canzoniere
The collection's 366 poems, 317 of them sonnets, split around Laura's death.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sonnet
How the Petrarchan sonnet became one of the two principal sonnet forms.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Laura (1944 film)
Preminger's film noir, its Academy Award for cinematography and its famous theme.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Her 1867 birth, the 1932 first book and the television series that followed.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Laura Ashley
The Welsh designer's start with silk screens and the 220 shops at her death.
View source
Nancy's Baby Names2020-06
What popularized the baby name Laura?
A naming writer's case that the 1944 film and its song turned the name around.
View source
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