Mara
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-ra]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Bitter
- Origin
- Romanian
About the Name Mara
Mara descends from the Hebrew Mara meaning "bitter" — appearing in the iconic biblical story of Naomi (Ruth 1:20), where Naomi changes her name to Mara after the deaths of her husband and sons ("Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me"). The name has additional Latin etymological lines connecting Mara to mara meaning "sea" or to a short form of Maria (see separate entry on Maria).
Notable bearers include American actress Mara Wilson (born 1987, the iconic American child actress of Mrs. Doubtfire 1993, Miracle on 34th Street 1994, and Matilda 1996); contemporary American actress Mara Lake; American basketball player Mara Williams; and the contemporary fictional Mara of various contemporary novels.
Mara has been continuously used in Italian-American, Spanish-American, and Jewish-American communities for decades. The name's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2000 to the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the multi-cultural etymological flexibility (Hebrew/Latin), the in-built distinctive bitter or sea etymological register, and the compact two-syllable structure. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to multi-cultural names. The name reads as both classical-multi-cultural and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Mar and Marie (alternate, a popular standalone name on its own) each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Mara, Marah, and Marra have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Mara (essentially identical across Italian/Spanish/Croatian/Hebrew), Marija (Slavic), and the original Hebrew Mara.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Mara
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Mara by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2021 with 568 girls named Mara (girl rank #540 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #589 for girls (499 US births). That's 49 places below its 2021 peak.
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.
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Where in the US Is Mara 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 Mara the strongest states are North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | #151 | 22 |
| 2 | South Dakota | #164 | 36 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #212 | 254 |
| 4 | Wisconsin | #302 | 175 |
| 5 | Iowa | #335 | 102 |
| 6 | Nebraska | #350 | 44 |
| 7 | Michigan | #380 | 227 |
| 8 | Ohio | #391 | 268 |
| 9 | Oregon | #418 | 78 |
| 10 | Connecticut | #439 | 30 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | #905 | 104 |
| 2 | Tennessee | #863 | 35 |
| 3 | Georgia | #816 | 37 |
| 4 | North Carolina | #791 | 61 |
| 5 | New Jersey | #778 | 58 |
| 6 | Virginia | #748 | 68 |
| 7 | California | #711 | 385 |
| 8 | New York | #703 | 220 |
| 9 | Kentucky | #700 | 37 |
| 10 | Maryland | #700 | 54 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mara in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar | Lord | Male | Hebrew |
Looking for names like Mara?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Mara to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mara against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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