Before I began genealogy work in the 1990’s, I was told that Lovrien (we pronounce it “Luv-rin”) was French, probably because it looks French and rumors of early ties to Canada. No one was sure of the origin of the name or who the emigrant ancestor was. Does Lovrien mean anything in French? No. There are no Lovriens in the phonebooks of France. Could it be a geographical name, like Lorraine? If you look in an atlas, you’ll find a town called Louvain in Belgium and a village in Slovenia named Lovrin. There are actually a few Lovrin families of Slovenian descent in the U.S., but they are no relation to the Lovriens. It wasn’t until Cyril Goodell (a Lovrien genealogist) came into contact with Elinor Kelley of New Hampshire (a Lovering family genealogist) that the true origin of the name was discovered.