Laura comes from the Latin laurus and means "laurel" or "laurel tree", the leaf that crowned victors in ancient Rome. Petrarch's 14th-century love poems to a woman named Laura made it a classic across Europe, and in America it belongs to Laura Ingalls Wilder of the Little House books. Laura ranked number 85 in the United States in 2000, left the top 100 soon after and has held steady at about number 350 for a decade, ranking number 379 in 2025.