Nora · Daily fortune

Nora is a feminine name that began as a short form. Behind the Name defines it as a short form of Honora or Eleanor; Wikipedia adds that Honora, a common Anglo-Norman name, derives ultimately from the Latin word honor, that the Irish Nóra is probably an Irish form of Honora, and that the Hungarian Nóra is a short form of Eleonóra. Henrik Ibsen used the name for Nora Helmer, the central character of A Doll's House (1879). A separate Arabic name of the same spelling is an alternate transcription of Nura. In 2025 it ranked #20 among American girls' names.

Behind the Name is terse — Nora is the "short form of Honora or Eleanor" — and the meaning therefore depends on which parent you follow. Wikipedia takes the Honora route as primary: Honora (also Honoria) was a common Anglo-Norman name "ultimately derived from the Latin word Honor", and the Irish Nóra is probably an Irish form of it. The Eleanor route leads somewhere less tidy: Behind the Name's Eleanor entry derives that name from the Old French form of the Occitan Alienòr and reports the tradition that Eleanor of Aquitaine was named for her mother Aenor using the Latin phrase alia Aenor, "the other Aenor" — while noting that there appear to be bearers predating her, so the explanation is not secure. The confidence here is 'likely' because the name is well attested as a short form but has two distinct parents, one of which has a contested etymology of its own.

Nora's history is the history of a nickname getting free of its parents. Honora was, as Wikipedia describes it, a common Anglo-Norman name, and the shortened Nora attached itself both to it and to Eleanor — a name whose own English popularity in the Middle Ages, Behind the Name records, followed the fame of Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen first of Louis VII of France and then of Henry II of England, and of two thirteenth-century queens, Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile. In Ireland the form Nóra took hold, and Behind the Name lists Irish diminutives of its own — Nóirín and Noreen. The name's decisive cultural moment is literary: Henrik Ibsen used it for Nora Helmer in A Doll's House (1879), whose exit at the end of the play became one of the nineteenth century's most argued-about endings. Wikipedia records that Nora has been among the most popular girls' names in Norway in the 2000s, topping the list in 2012, and its modern bearers include the American writer and director Nora Ephron and the novelist Nora Roberts.

Nora ranked #20 for girls in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration). Wikipedia supplies the one comparative data point fetched for this profile: the name has been among the most popular girls' names in Norway in the 2000s and topped that list in 2012. No historical American series was fetched, so the US trajectory is not recorded here.

The vowel is the variable. Behind the Name gives English /ˈnɔɹ.ə/ (NOR-ə), German /ˈnoː.ʁa/, Dutch /ˈnoː.raː/ and Spanish /ˈno.ɾa/ — all with a full final /a/ except the English, which reduces it to a schwa. The separate Arabic name of the same spelling is pronounced /ˈnuː.ra/, with a quite different first vowel. The other forms below are the ones Behind the Name lists; their pronunciations were not verified in this pass.

Nora is spare in a way very few currently fashionable girls' names are: two syllables, no frills, no decorative ending, and nothing about it that dates to a decade. That plainness is the appeal — it belongs with Clara, Jane and Ruth rather than with Aria and Luna — and the Ibsen association gives it a literary seriousness that survives the fact that most people choosing it are not thinking about A Doll's House. It works as a full name or as the everyday form of Honora, Eleanor or Eleonora, which is useful for parents who want a long certificate name and a short daily one.

The bearers below are the ones named in the Behind the Name entry and the Wikipedia article consulted for this profile.

Names that share Nora's plainness, its place in the Eleanor and Honora families, or its sound.