LAURA MARTIN

Feminine form of the Late Latin male name Laurus ‘laurel’. St Laura was a 9th-century Spanish nun who met her death in a cauldron of molten lead. Laura is also the name of the woman addressed in the love poetry of the Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–74), and it owes much of its subsequent popularity to this. There have been various speculations about her identity, but it has not been established with any certainty. He first met her in 1327 while living in Avignon, and she died of the plague in 1348. The popularity of the given name in the English-speaking world has endured since the 19th century, when it was probably imported from Italy.

English, Scottish, Irish, French, Dutch, German, Czech, Slovak, Spanish (Martín), Italian (Venice), etc.: from a personal name (Latin Martinus, a derivative of Mars, genitive Martis, the Roman god of fertility and war, whose name may derive ultimately from a root mar ‘gleam’). This was borne by a famous 4th-century saint, Martin of Tours, and consequently became extremely popular throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. As a North American surname, this form has absorbed many cognates from other European forms.