It was named for the Province of Labrador, Canada. It is also the place where this stone was first discovered. An Eskimo legends tell us the lights from the northern hemisphere were imprisoned in the rocks along the cost of Labrador but a brave warrior found them and freed all the lights with a mighty blow of his spear. However he could not free some of the light from within the rocks and the beautiful mineral, which remained with the light, was hence called labradorite.

Labrador in Canada is the main source of this stone. However, Finland, Norway,  Madagascar and some former Russian states also supply this stone.
The colors of labradorite may vary as per their country of origin. The grey variety  generally comes from Canada. Labradorite from former states of Russia is white to  yellow. There is also a variety of Labradorite in blue colour that is known as A  lovely “spectrolite”. Spectrolite is found mostly in finland.
Labradorite tends to have strong pleochroism, thus showing sometime interesting  mixture of colours when viewed from different angles.