Entry № 7591 · Irish origin

Norah Norah — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ NOR-ah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Irish
Meaning
"Honour, light"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Medieval (Irish)

A name that means "honour, light".

Norah is the Irish form of Eleanor — itself ultimately from the Latin honor, meaning "honour," or the Greek helene, meaning "light" or "sun's ray." The H spelling is the older Irish form; Nora (without the H) is the simpler modern variant.

Norah has been continuously used in Ireland for centuries and in the U.S. for a hundred years. Today Norah sits in the U.S. top 100 and is climbing fast.

Honour, light — a Irish name.

The name in its native script.

Norah
Transliteration
Norah
Pronunciation
/ ˈnɔːr.ə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Norah stands.

Norah does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Norahs before her.

Real people
Norah Jones
American singer and pianist. Nine Grammy Awards.
born 1979
In fiction
Nora Helmer
Heroine of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.
1879 play

Names connected to Norah.

The number behind Norah.

2

The Peacemaker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Norah reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.