Igraine as a Baby Name. Meaning and Origin of Igraine

What is the meaning of the name Igraine ?

The baby name Igraine is a Female name , 2 syllables long and is pronounced /ˈɪɡreɪn/ (IG-rayn).

Igraine is Cornish in Origin.

Igraine is the Arthurian name of King Arthur’s mother, first widely known from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (as Igerna) and popularized in French romances and Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur. The English spelling Igraine crystallized in later retellings and saw modest revival in the 19th-20th centuries through Tennyson and modern fantasy, though it remains rare in contemporary registers.

Form and etymology trace through Old French Ygerne/Ygraine and Medieval Latin Igerna to the Welsh Eigr/Eigyr, a traditional name for Arthur’s mother in early Welsh genealogies. The precise meaning is debated; scholars sometimes connect Eigr with a Welsh root suggesting modesty or purity, but no consensus exists. Variants include Ygraine, Igrayne, Ygerne, Igerna, and Welsh Eigr/Eigyr. The name carries strong mytho-literary associations: nobility, fate, and the liminal space between mortal and magical realms, rather than a settled lexical meaning.

⚙ Igraine is extremely rare. Our whole dataset turns up only 3 recorded uses, across 1 country.