Lorena (name)

Lorena is a feminine given name with different origins. It can be used as an Italian, Portuguese and Spanish version of Lorraine or, alternately, as a Latin version of Lauren. As used in the United States, it may have come from the song title of a popular 1856 song by Rev. Henry D.L. Webster and Joseph Philbrick Webster, who are said to have derived the name from an anagram of the name Lenore, a character in Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem The Raven. In Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara's daughter with Frank Kennedy was named Ella Lorena in reference to the song Lorena. Frank G. Slaughter wrote a book called Lorena in which the character was also called Reeny hence the alternative pronunciation of Lor ee na.