A pretty name doesn’t mean a pretty meaning! The proof with this feminine first name which has a negative connotation, but which did not prevent its success.
Apart from those which are invented from scratch, first names have an etymology which allows us to know their meaning. And, for some parents, the meaning of a name is very important. For others, it is much less so and what matters above all are the sounds. This allows certain first names to be assigned, sometimes even very often, despite a meaning that may be strange or even negative.
This is the case of a feminine first name which, despite its negative meaning, is very common in France. Its popularity has climbed slowly since the beginning of the 1980s, reaching the top 10 of the most given female first names. It was in 2010 that it reached its peak, with no less than 4,905 attributions, according to INSEE, which allowed it to be the third most given girl’s first name that year.
Its popularity rating has been in constant decline since then, but that does not prevent it from still being in the top 50 first names: in 2024, it occupied 44e place (with 980 allocations). Not bad, especially for a first name that has a not really positive meaning! This is Lola, which is the diminutive of Dolores (just like Lolie and Lolita), which means “pain” in Latin. It must be said that it has all the arguments to convince parents to get over this unfortunate meaning: it is a short first name with soft sounds, and which ends with “a”… Everything that has been in trend in recent years.
Lola is therefore proof that, even if a first name does not have a poetic, positive and/or strong meaning, it can have a certain success. It is also not the only common first name to have a negative (or at least not positive) meaning. We can also cite Léa (which means “gazelle”, but also “wild/tired cow”), Claude (“lame”), Beverly (“near beavers”), Paul and Pauline (“small/weak”), Azélie (“dry”), or even Blaise (“who stammers”).
