Holiday Calendar

National Lauren Day

Next celebratedThursday, October 22, 2026

The two best-known American Laurens both picked the name rather than inherited it: Betty Joan Perske and Ralph Rueben Lifshitz. October 22 is for everyone who did inherit it.

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Last updated September 5, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEOctober 22
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

No founder on record, only an archived listing.

No founder, proclamation or launch announcement has been identified for National Lauren Day. Of five holiday-listing registries checked, only one carries a listing for it at any point in the Internet Archive's record, and the other four carry none at any date.

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

Forty years a boy's name before anyone gave it to a girl

National Lauren Day falls on October 22, and the name it honors did not start out as a girl's name at all. In United States birth records, Lauren spent its first four decades attached almost entirely to boys.

Lauren turns up in the Social Security Administration's national name files for boys in 1884. It does not appear for girls until 1924, forty years later. Those files list only names given to at least five babies of one sex in a year, so both dates are floors rather than firsts.

The crossover came in 1945. That was the first year in which more American girls than boys were given the name, 61 years after it first shows up in the data, and boys have not led in any year since.

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ORIGINS

Lauren Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name reaches back to a town. Behind the Name traces Laurence to the Roman cognomen Laurentius, which meant "from Laurentum", after a city in ancient Italy. English took it up much later as Laurence and Lawrence.

CHAPTER 01

A martyr carries it across Europe

Saint Laurence was a third-century deacon in Rome. Ordered to hand over the church's treasures, he presented the poor and the sick instead. Britannica tells the same story of the saint it files as St. Lawrence, who died in 258.

His popularity did the rest. The name came into general use across the Christian world in various spellings, and the feminine form this day is named for arrived much later.

CHAPTER 02

A studio debut in 1944

Nancy Hawks spotted a New York model named Betty Joan Perske on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, and suggested her husband test her for a part. Warner Bros. released the result on 11 October 1944, with Perske cast at nineteen.

The billing on that film read Lauren Bacall. In the birth records the girls' count moved from 46 in 1944 to 381 in 1945, while the total number of girls in the files fell, so this was not a birth-rate effect. Behind the Name credits her with first popularizing the feminine form; the data here shows sequence, not cause.

CHAPTER 03

The other Lauren who chose it

The name's other well-known American bearer took it as a surname. Ralph Rueben Lifshitz was born in the Bronx in 1939, and his brother Jerry, teased over the surname in the Air Force Reserve, suggested a change. The three brothers settled on Lauren.

Both came by the name deliberately. One took it as a screen credit, the other as a family decision, and neither was born to it.

CHAPTER 04

A day with no author

The observance itself has none of this documentation. No founder, proclamation or launch announcement has been identified, and no source has been found giving a reason for the October 22 date.

What can be dated is its circulation. Of five holiday-listing registries checked against the Internet Archive, only one carries a listing at all, first captured in August 2022, while the other four have none at any date.

TIMELINE

Timeline

First boys in the record

Five boys are recorded with the name Lauren, the earliest year it clears the Social Security Administration's five-birth listing threshold.

First girls in the record

Six girls are recorded with the name, against sixty-seven boys the same year.

A screen debut in October

Warner Bros. released To Have and Have Not on 11 October, the first film credit for an actress billed as Lauren Bacall.

Girls pass boys

American girls given the name outnumber boys for the first time, 381 against 62.

The American high point

The name reaches 21,065 girls in a single year, its largest recorded count.

Earliest surviving day listing

The oldest surviving capture of any holiday-registry listing for the observance is taken in August, which is the earliest its circulation can be documented rather than when it began.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Lauren Day

LANGUAGE

A name that changed sex inside one national record

Lauren's turn from a boys' name to a girls' name sits inside one national dataset, with a crossover that can be dated to a single year. That makes it checkable evidence rather than an anecdote about how naming fashions move.

EVIDENCE

An undocumented day can still be dated

No founder has been identified for this observance, so there is no founding date to give. The archive capture record still puts a checkable floor under when the day began circulating, which is a firmer answer than none.

COUNTING

Which spellings you count changes the answer

Every figure here counts the exact spelling Lauren, with Lauryn, Loren and Lorin counted separately as the reference files them. Folding those variants in would move the crossover year from 1945 to 1955, so the choice is part of the finding.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Lauren Day by the Numbers

2,117
US boys named Lauren to 1944
777
US girls named Lauren, 2025
475,577
US girls named Lauren since 1880
5,818
US boys named Lauren since 1880

GOOD TO KNOW

National Lauren Day Around the World

England and Wales

Lauren sat inside the top ten in 1996, at the Office for National Statistics' rank of 5, with 6,299 girls. That is the first year the ONS series covers. By 2025 the same series recorded 28 girls.

United States

The two national records do not cover the same ground. American files run from 1880, while the British series begins only in 1996, so the earlier American record is the only one of the two that reaches back to the name's masculine period at all.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Lauren Day

GET

Get the spelling right on the card

Lauryn, Loren, Lorena and Laura are separate names with their own histories, not variant spellings of one. Check which one you are actually writing to.

WATCH

Watch the 1944 debut

To Have and Have Not is the film that first put the billing Lauren Bacall on a screen. It runs about 100 minutes and it is her screen debut.

ASK

Ask a Lauren whether she was named after someone

Parents pick names for reasons that never reach a registry, and no dataset can recover them. Ask her, and write the answer down while you can.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Lauren Day?

1 / 8

In what year does the name Lauren first appear in US Social Security records for boys?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance, so it is a normal working day. A full-text search of the US Federal Register returns no document mentioning it, though that sweep covers United States federal records only.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

9sources
4primary records
3independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Social Security Administration2026
Popular Baby Names: national data
Every US given name by birth year and sex, 1880 to 2025, for names with at least five births.
View source
Office for National Statistics2025
Baby names in England and Wales: girls
Official rank and count for every girl's name registered in England and Wales.
View source
American Film Institute
AFI Catalog of Feature Films: To Have and Have Not
Catalog record for the 1944 Warner Bros. film, including its release date and Bacall's screen debut.
View source
U.S. Federal Register
Federal Register document search
Full-text search of US federal documents, including presidential proclamations.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Laurence
The derivation from Laurentius and Laurentum, and the saint who carried the name into general use.
View source
Behind the Name
Lauren
Lists Lauren as both feminine and masculine, and notes it was originally a masculine name.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica2026-08
Lauren Bacall
Biography of the actress born Betty Joan Perske in New York City in 1924.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ralph Lauren
Biography covering his birth as Ralph Rueben Lifshitz and how the brothers chose the name Lauren.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
St. Lawrence
The third-century Roman deacon, his death in 258, and his 10 August feast day.
View source
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