Laura

Laura is the feminine form of the late Latin name Laurus, meaning laurel, the evergreen whose leaves crowned victors and poets in ancient Rome. The name gained literary fame through Petrarch, the Italian poet who addressed his Canzoniere to a woman named Laura, a figure often identified with Laura de Noves of Avignon. Those poems shaped European love poetry for centuries and kept the name in steady use. The French form is Laure, while Lauretta and Laurie are diminutives used in Italian and English.