From the French-Canadian surname LaRamie, popularized as a Wyoming place name meaning 'canopy of leafy boughs.'
Laramie is an American place-name with a frontier history behind it. It comes from the name of Jacques La Ramée, a French or French Canadian trapper associated with the early history of the Rocky Mountain region; his surname became attached to the Laramie River, then to Fort Laramie and the Wyoming city. Like many American geographic names that later became given names, Laramie carries the atmosphere of landscape first: plains, trails, rivers, and the mythology of the West.
As a personal name, Laramie is relatively modern and uncommon, which gives it a distinctive, open-sky quality. Its rise fits the pattern of surname and place-name adoption that became more fashionable in the twentieth century, especially in the United States. Because of its Wyoming associations, it can evoke pioneer history, ranching culture, and the visual language of the American West.
At the same time, the sound of the name is gentler than some rugged Western names, which helps explain why it has appealed across gender lines. Culturally, Laramie also carries more recent resonance through the city itself, which has appeared in American public memory for both regional identity and modern social history. Literary and cinematic Western associations hover around it even when a specific character is not intended.
The name feels expansive and atmospheric, less inherited from a long line of saints or monarchs than from geography, migration, and myth. That makes Laramie a name with an unmistakably American story: part map, part memory, part frontier romance.