As a Christian given name, Salome has been in occasional use since the Protestant Reformation. This was due to a second person of this name in the New Testament: one of the women who witnessed the crucifixion and later discovered that Jesus' tomb was empty. It is used in Georgia due to the 4th-century Salome of Ujarma, who is considered a saint in the Georgian Church.
As an East Frisian name it was recorded from the 1500s onwards.
Bearers of this name include figure skating coach and former competitor Mie Hamada (濱田 美栄) (1959-), actress, voice actress and singer Mie Sonozaki (園崎 未恵) (1973-) and former actress Mie Hama (浜 美枝) (1943-).
This spelling was used by Lord Byron for characters in The Giaour (1813) and Don Juan (1819), and it is through him that the name was introduced to the English-speaking world.
This name was used by Edmund Spenser in his poem 'The Faerie Queene' (1590), where it belongs to a sister of Belphoebe who allegorically represents married love and chastity.
The Old Norse cognate Ǫlrún occurs in the Eddic poem the Völundarkviða, belonging to a Valkyrie who marries the archer Egil. This form of the name was borne by an 11th-century Bavarian recluse, Alruna of Cham, a patron saint of pregnancy. Also see Aurinia. It coincides with the name of the mandrake plant, being alruna in Swedish, alrune in Danish and Norwegian and Alraune in German.
In the English-speaking world this name is more commonly given to girls. This is due to the American actress Alexis Smith (1921-1993), who began appearing in movies in the early 1940s. It got a boost in popularity in the 1980s from a character on the soap opera Dynasty.