as a First Name
From Greek eirēnē ‘peace’ it was borne in Greek mythology by a minor goddess who personified peace, and by a Byzantine empress (752–803). The name was taken up in the English-speaking world at the end of the 19th century, and became popular in the 20th, partly as a result of being used as the name of a character in John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga (1922). It was formerly pronounced in three syllables, as in Greek, but is now thoroughly naturalized as an English name and usually pronounced as two syllables.
| 240th in the U.S. for 2011 |
Nicknames & variations
Quick facts
- Hundreds of thousands
- of people in the U.S have this name
- 254,428
- to be exact (as of February 2011)
- 301,401
- if you include dead people (since the government started keeping track)
- New Mexico
- has the most people named Irene per capita
- 1910
- marked the height of its popularity
99.98%
0.02%
69%
55+
55+
21%
30-54
30-54
5%
13-29
13-29
6%
0-12
0-12
Top state populations
U.S. Distribution Map
