Is Irene in the Bible?

No one named Irene appears in the Bible. The name is the Greek word for peace, eirēnē, which occurs 92 times in the New Testament. It became a Christian name through early martyrs such as Irene of Thessalonica, who was put to death in 304 for keeping copies of the Scriptures.

Is Irene in the Bible?

No person in the Old or New Testament is called Irene, and no translation uses it as a name. The word it comes from is common there: eirēnē is the ordinary New Testament word for peace. When the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples behind locked doors, he greeted them with eirēnē hymin, which the King James Version translates “Peace be unto you” (John 20:19, 21, 26). The night before his death he had told them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:27).

Paul opens each of the thirteen letters that carry his name with a wish for grace and peace. Romans begins, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:7). The peacemakers whom Jesus calls blessed in the Beatitudes are, in Greek, eirēnopoioi, a compound of the same word (Matthew 5:9).

What Irene means

Irene comes from the Greek Eirēnē, “peace.” In Greek religion Eirene was also a goddess, the personification of peace. She was one of the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons, and a daughter of Zeus and Themis, and she was shown as a young woman carrying a cornucopia, a scepter and a torch.

The name takes many forms: Irène in French, Irina in Russian and Romanian, Irena in Polish and Czech, Irén in Hungarian and Eirini in modern Greek. In English it is usually pronounced eye-REEN. The masculine form is Irenaeus, from the Greek Eirēnaios, “peaceful,” the name of the second-century bishop Irenaeus of Lyon. Spanish and Italian use Ireneo.

Is Irene a Hebrew name?

No. Irene is Greek and has no Hebrew form or meaning. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, and the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, regularly renders it as eirēnē.

Is Irene a Christian name?

Yes. Irene is not a biblical name, but it has been a saint’s name since the early centuries, and it has traditionally been more popular among Eastern Christians than in the West. It was not in regular use in English until the nineteenth century. In the United States it was one of the 20 most popular names for girls every year from 1915 to 1925, reaching 16th in 1918, and it ranked 651st in 2025. It is more common today in Spain and Italy, where it ranked 60th and 57th among girls’ names in 2024.

Irene in Byzantine history

Irene of Athens ruled the Byzantine Empire, first as regent for her young son, Constantine VI, and from 797 to 802 alone, the first woman to lead the empire. In 787 she called the Second Council of Nicaea, which condemned iconoclasm and restored the veneration of icons, and the monk Theodore the Studite praised her as a saint for it. To take sole power, she had her son blinded in 797.

Saints named Irene

Irene of Thessalonica and her sisters Agape and Chionia were Christians from Aquileia, in northern Italy. In 303 the emperor Diocletian made it a capital crime to own the Christian Scriptures, and the sisters hid their copies. They were arrested for refusing to eat food sacrificed to the gods and tried before the governor at Thessalonica, where Irene was also condemned for keeping the books. All three were sentenced to be burned alive in 304. Western churches keep their feast on 3 April and Eastern churches on 16 April. Santorini, the Greek island whose patron she is, takes its name from her; the name is a contraction of “Saint Irene.”

In the twentieth century the Italian nun Aurelia Stefani took Irene as her religious name. As a Consolata missionary in East Africa during the First World War, she nursed wounded soldiers and the carriers who marched with the armies. In 1930 she died of plague caught from a patient at Gikondi, in Kenya, and she was beatified at Nyeri in 2015.

Related reading

• Bible verses about peace
• What are the Beatitudes?
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names