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26 years after the hit TV show Gilmore Girls introduced its heroines — bohemian mom Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and brainiac teen Lorelai “Rory” Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) — millennial and Gen Z moms are naming their daughters after the beloved duo.
According to baby registry platform Babylist, “Lorelai” is one of the most trendy names for newborn girls, ranking 333 out of 1000 babies born in 2025. (Its phonetic twin, Lorelei, is also high on the list, hitting 441 out of 1000.) Babylist says “Lorelai” has jumped 69 places since 2024, making it one of the most popular new names for girls, and hitting an all time high after first peaking in the mid-1970s.
The social security administration, which keeps track of all registered births in the U.S., says the name has jumped 70% in just 12 months.
“I have a Lorelai,” wrote one Redditor who said she “loves” the show. On Facebook, a mom admitted her toddler daughter was named for Gilmore Girls, too. “I looked on my Gilmore Girls DVD collection [from] 20 years ago to make sure I had the correct spelling.” Another millennial mom confessed, “A little girl in my daughter’s class is named Lorelai. I was so excited when I found out! [It’s] the first time I heard it in the real world.”
Before it became a TV legend, “Lorelai” and “Lorelei” were common German names associated with the beautiful but deadly water nymphs of the Rhine river, who were similar to Odysseus’s sirens. In 1824, German poet Heinrich Heine wrote a poem called Die Loreley about the hypnotic mermaids that helped propel the name. Marilyn Monroe’s character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was named Lorelei Lee.
But it was Gilmore Girls that catapulted the name to find-it-on-a-keychain status. Following the quirky citizens of an idyllic Connecticut town called Stars Hollow, Gilmore Girls ran for 7 seasons from 2000 to 2007, and helped launch the careers of Melissa McCarthy and Jon Hamm.
Known for its whiz-bang dialogue that mixed goofy pop culture puns with literary references, Gilmore Girls followed 30-something Lorelai and her teen daughter, also named Lorelai, as they lived, laughed, loved —and drank a dangerous amount of coffee at a diner called Luke’s. (Spoiler alert: Lorelai the elder eventually married Luke the coffee dude. It was epic.)
Gilmore Girls netted star Lauren Graham a Golden Globe nomination, and became a re-watch hit when Netflix loaded all 153 episodes onto its platform. Gen Z discovered the show during the pandemic, leading to a massive viewer increase in 2020.
As the name “Lorelai” takes off on census data, it’s also getting a moment on TikTok. This week, toddler mom Hayley Belle Mullins posted a tour of her playroom, which includes replicas of Gilmore Girls locations like the diner and the Stars Hollow gazebo.
Her daughter, 2, is named Lorelai.
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