Variant of Renée, from Latin renatus meaning 'reborn' or 'born again'.
Renae is an anglicized spelling of Renée, the French feminine form of René, which derives from the Latin *renatus* — reborn. The Latin root *renasci* (to be born again) carried deep significance in early Christian theology, where spiritual rebirth through baptism was central doctrine; the name René and its variants were thus popular in Catholic France from the medieval period onward, given to children with the hope of divine renewal and grace. The masculine René was borne by the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), whose *cogito ergo sum* made his first name as philosophically resonant as his last.
The feminine Renée became a thoroughly French name — elegant, Latinate, distinctly Gallic — and spread into the English-speaking world through French cultural influence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Renée Adorée, the French-born silent film star, was among its early glamorous ambassadors to American audiences. Renée Zellweger has kept the name visible in contemporary popular culture, and Renée Fleming has given it an operatic grandeur.
The spelling Renae (and also Renay, Renee without the accent) emerged primarily in the United States and Australia as English-speaking families adopted the name while dropping or adjusting the French orthography. The Renae spelling in particular has a specifically mid-century American feel — the kind of individualized spelling that flourished in the postwar decades when parents sought to distinguish their children's names on paper while keeping the familiar sounds. Today it reads as a warm vintage variant: recognizably the same name as Renée but with a slightly informal, handwritten quality. The meaning at its core — rebirth, renewal — remains as resonant as ever, making Renae a name given at a beginning that carries within it the promise of perpetual becoming.