Myra
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Abundance
- Origin
- Greek
About the Name Myra
Myra has multiple proposed origins. The most credible Greek line connects Myra to the ancient city of Myra (now in modern Turkey) — the iconic city in Anatolia where Saint Nicholas was born and served as bishop in the 4th century CE (Saint Nicholas of Myra, the historical figure who became Santa Claus). A separate Latin line connects Myra to the literary creation by 17th-century English poet Fulke Greville (who used Myra as a feminine form of his patron's name Myron).
Notable bearers include American actress Myra Loy (using the alternate spelling, 1905–1993, the iconic American Hollywood Golden Age actress of The Thin Man series); American activist Myra Bradwell (1831–1894, the iconic American suffragist and the first woman admitted to the Illinois Bar); and the iconic British Olympic gymnast Myra Loy.
Myra'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 has been driven partly by Spanish-American naming and partly by the broader American taste for short, vintage-revival girls' names alongside Mira, Lila, and Stella. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Greek-Saint Nicholas-Latinate pedigree, the in-built distinctive ancient-historical religious anchor, and the popular two-syllable -a ending family. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival names. The name reads as both classical-Greek and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Myr (the dominant short form, casual and warm), Myrie, and the rare Myra-bear each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Myra and Mira have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Greek Myra.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Myra
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Myra by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2018 with 634 girls named Myra (girl rank #491 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #663 for girls (429 US births). That's 172 places below its 2018 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 Myra 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 Myra the strongest states are New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #342 | 262 |
| 2 | Massachusetts | #350 | 159 |
| 3 | Washington | #367 | 197 |
| 4 | Connecticut | #411 | 48 |
| 5 | Indiana | #440 | 156 |
| 6 | Ohio | #462 | 231 |
| 7 | Iowa | #468 | 67 |
| 8 | Maryland | #482 | 85 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #492 | 107 |
| 10 | Michigan | #493 | 172 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Myra in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mira | Bitter | Female | Hebrew |
Looking for names like Myra?
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 Myra to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Myra 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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