How did Lori become such a popular name in the United States? What part of the world did it originate in?
There is a county in Ireland called Tyrone which means in Irish (Gaelic) the land of Owen/Eoin/Eoghan. I’ve not heard tell of many Irish people with this name but it seems common enough in America. Is the American name derived from the place name or of a separate origin?
Tyrone was probably made popular because of the actor Tyrone Power:
He was one of a long line of Tyrone Powers, the earliest of which was born in Ireland:
This one actually had Tyrone as a middle name, as you can see.
Lori probably arose as a variant of Laura:
He died in the late '50s and it reached its peak in the '70s. Could that one celebrity count for every Tyrone born since 1950? Am I right in my perception of Tyrone as a predominantly African-American name?
The first “Tyrone” I thought of was Tyrone Green, Eddie Murphy’s “C-I-L-L my landlord” character on Saturday Night Live.
Well, you’re not alone in that perception. I can’t find a link now, but I remember reading a few years ago that Irish immigrants to the US were being warned not to name their child Tyrone because he would be likely to face discrimination from potential employers who would assume he was black.
(That’s what the article said. Don’t shoot the messenger.)
Not all of them, of course. The actor first made the name popular and it snowballed from there.
I suspect that what happened was this:
Tyrone Power became famous. Tyrone was a somewhat rare first name in Ireland that was traditional in his Irish-American family.
Americans started naming their babies Tyrone because of the actor Tyrone Power.
The name became moderately common in the U.S., even among those who didn’t much care about Tyrone Power.
It became particularly common among African-Americans for some reason.
At that point other Americans quit naming their babies Tyrone.
There are other cases of this happening where a name that has no long tradition among a particular ethnic group in the U.S. for some odd reason suddenly becomes particularly popular in that ethnic group. Other Americans then quit using that name for their babies. Often then the members of that ethnic group later quit using that name themselves for their babies also because it now seems too obviously tied to that ethnic group.
There is a pronunciation difference.
The name “Tyrone” seems to be pronounced “TIE-rone”, while the county name is always pronounced "tuh-RONE or “t’RONE” with the stress firmly on the second syllable.
First generation Irish immigrants might call their son Tyrone if they were especially patriotic- but they wouldn’t prononce it the same as most Americans.
It used to be fairly standard in the U.S. to pronounce it like this:
> "tuh-RONE or “t’RONE” with the stress firmly on the second syllable
It’s only in more recent years, and it’s mostly among African Americans, that it has been more common to pronouce it like this:
> “TIE-rone”
I only know one person called Tyrone, and he’s not black or Irish. He pronounces it “TIE-r@n” (with a schwa in the unstressed syllable). That’s in the UK Midlands.
Other than the racial angle, this basic process is true for most names. Other than the perennials (e.g., David, Michael, Charles, John), it boils down to:
This seems to happen more often with female names than male ones. Sometimes the first step isn’t clear cut, but often enough it is (e.g., Linda).
There was a somewhat abombinable period in ca. the 1970s when diminutive forms of female names began to be spelled with a terminal “i” as opposed to “ie,” and in some cases to be assigned as given names. Hence the rash of Jennis, Jacquis, and Loris.
I side with the Ireland---->Tyrone Power---->black version of Tyrone, which jibes with everything I’ve seen. N.B. Tyrone does not seem to be very popular among blacks in recent decades, it probably would have peaked/begun to recede a few decades ago.
Wendy is another example.
I’ve often heard the county name pronounced “tie-RONE”.
So have I, some people also use something akin to the Irish pronunciation “Tier-own”.
Class also plays a role in the drop of a name’s popularity as does scandal if a public figure with that particular first name gets into trouble. “Brittany” (and it’s variants like “Britney”) is perfect example of a name whose popularity has dropped drastically because of these factors. It used to be a stereotypical yuppie monicker for girls but now it’s got such a white-trash reputation, nobody would seriously consider naming their newborn daughter that.
As for the second factor, “Richard” was a perennial male name for years until Richard Nixon’s presidency and Watergate when it took a sharp dip in popularity. I don’t know if it’s recovered since then.
ruadh, aye, but by Dubs, not Ulstermen 
My point was really that it it is the second syllable that is stressed.
I’m not sure how to type things phonetically properly.
The first syllable is (to my ears) somewhere in the
tie
teer
tuh
t’
family, but not quite any of them.
I know what it sounds like, and I know how to say it, I’m just not good at transcribing it.
All the Tyrones I know pronounce it tie-RONE, with the emphasis on the second syllable.
I am 36. Most of the Tyrones I know are about 10 years older than me at least. I guess many of the black community has abondoned the name. Kids of my own generation were more likely to be named Tywan or Tyquan or Tyrell or some other such made up name.