National Lori Day

Laura comes from the Latin laurus, meaning laurel. In ancient Rome the leaves of that tree were woven into the garlands handed to victors. English speakers had taken the name up by the 13th century.

It carried some hard history with it. One 9th-century bearer, Saint Laura, was a Spanish nun who died thrown into a vat of molten lead. Another was the subject of the poems of Petrarch.

Lorraine has no plant in it at all. It is a region of eastern France, and the name means kingdom of Lothar, after a Frankish king who was Charlemagne's great-grandson. It entered English as a given name in the late 19th century and rose after the First World War, while France and Germany were contesting the region itself.

National Lori Day falls on November 7, and the paperwork behind it is thin. No founder is on record, and no source gives a reason for the date.

What it has instead is people. In 2024 the date drew posts from women named Lori, which is where an observance like this one actually lives.