Lore
A rare surname with uncertain origins, probably arising from an old nickname, place-name, or shortened form of another name.
The #9,932 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 95,057 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Lore is too sparsely documented in the historical surname dictionaries to pin down confidently. It may reflect a short form of a medieval personal name, a nickname, or a lost/abbreviated place-based surname rather than a single clear source word. Because the surviving excerpts do not give a direct derivation, the safest reading is that the name has an uncertain origin in English usage, possibly influenced by Old French or Middle English forms.
History
The name appears only sporadically in the historical material, which suggests it was always uncommon. In modern records it remains rare in the United States, consistent with a surname that either had limited regional survival or was often absorbed into similar spellings such as Love or Lord. The dictionaries consulted do not provide a strong lineage story for this exact form.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Modern surname dictionaries sometimes mention Lore only in passing, which is itself a clue that it was never a major surname cluster.
From the historical record
“b6lstaV-r'\ See ' Old r Lore Miscellany' (Viking Club), July 1912, p. 104. ITHELL is prob. not pure Celtic but a borrowing of 0;E. eeTpel, ' noble,' ' famous,'”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)