Amara: Meaning of Baby Name Amara

About the Name Amara

Amara has multiple proposed origins. The most credible direct etymology connects Amara to the Igbo word for "grace" or "mercy" (used in West African Yoruba and Igbo naming traditions). A separate Greek line connects Amara to amaranthos meaning "unfading" or "immortal" — the same root that produces the English flower name amaranth. A third reading derives Amara from the Sanskrit amarah meaning "immortal" or "eternal."

The multi-cultural etymological possibilities make Amara one of the more genuinely cross-cultural girls' names in modern American naming. The name has been used in West African, Indian, and English-speaking American naming traditions in different registers but with similar phonetic forms. The contemporary American Amara surge is part of the broader 21st-century resurgence in short, vowel-rich, multi-cultural girls' names alongside Aria, Maya, and Nora.

Notable bearers are largely modern. American actress Amara La Negra (Diana Daniela De Los Santos Castro, born 1990, the Afro-Dominican-American singer and reality-TV star whose career through Love & Hip Hop: Miami from 2018 onward gave the name a substantial Latin-American hip-hop register). American basketball player Amara Sy. Amara climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2005 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 100 by 2022. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the multi-cultural etymological flexibility, the popular three-syllable -ara ending family, and the in-built positive meanings across multiple language traditions. Common nicknames Mara (a related name), Mari, and the rare Amaree each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Amari (also predominantly male, see entry) and Amarah have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Amara (Italian, identical) and the broader Igbo and Sanskrit etymological roots.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Amara

1,029

Greek baby names in our dictionary

545

Greek female names

488

5-letter A-names in our dictionary

1,183

A-female names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

26,790

total US births named Amara (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

📈 Rising: Amara climbed 44 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#142 in 2020 → #98 in 2025).

Annual US births named Amara by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 2,630 girls named Amara (girl rank #98 that year).

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Amara Most Popular?

Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Amara the strongest states are Vermont, New Mexico, Hawaii.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Vermont	#78	16
2	New Mexico	#81	170
3	Hawaii	#101	83
4	Alaska	#106	42
5	District of Columbia	#109	72
6	North Dakota	#127	50
7	Maine	#128	67
8	Indiana	#129	476
9	Arizona	#133	466
10	South Dakota	#135	71

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Louisiana	#308	160
2	Alabama	#259	183
3	New Jersey	#253	324
4	Mississippi	#228	108
5	Tennessee	#207	337
6	Virginia	#206	369
7	North Carolina	#204	483
8	Texas	#200	1,589
9	Utah	#197	230
10	Massachusetts	#193	281

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Amara in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Amaris	Amaris Meaning Child Of The Moon Is The Astrological Name For Cancer.	Female	Spanish
Mara	Bitter	Female	Romanian

Looking for names like Amara?

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Compare Amara to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Amara against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Amara vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Amara vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Amara vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Amara vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Amara vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Amara vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Amara vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Amara vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

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