The name Irene derived from the Greek name Eirene, which means ‘peace’. Eirene was the Greek goddess of peace. Traditionally, the name was known more in Eastern European countries, in England it has been in regular use only since the 19th century.
Irene is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Irene isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Irene ranks 593. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 3 were named Irene. In the entire USA, approximately 308,950 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Irene. That is 0.09 % of all living Americans.
The name Irene derived from the Greek name Eirene, which means ‘peace’. Eirene was the Greek goddess of peace. Traditionally, the name was known more in Eastern European countries, in England it has been in regular use only since the 19th century.
From 1890 ... to about 1930, Irene was quite popular in the US, since then it has become increasingly rare.
Irene is the epitome of perseverance. Every year since first names have been registered in the U.S., parents have come up with the idea of naming their child Irene. This means that several girls named Irene have witnessed significant events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Irene has reached its best rank of #16 multiple times, most recently in 1919. The name has also been in the top 100 for many years. This makes Irene one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Irene was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Irene will be Irene. Like every other year, there have been newborns named Irene in 2022 – in fact 440 to be precise, confirming Irene as is still a very popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #602 among all girls‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 2011, when only 406 baby girls were named Irene.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Irene is one of them. However, Irene is not equally widespread in all states, but people in North Dakota seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,881 women called Irene who live here are 0,552% of all female residents and push their name up to #29, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in North Dakota.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter I is pretty rare as an initial letter for girls' names: only 1.7% of all common girls' names in the US begin with an I. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With five letters, the name Irene is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that since 1.7% of all girls’ names begin with an I, this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course single names that begin with an I, which are quite popular
If your name is Irene and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Irene, you can simply say:
Igloo
Rocket
Elephant
Nut
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Irene
Irene
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
I
R
E
N
E
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
I
R
E
N
E
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Irene sounds like this:
