Caira
Feminine · “Italian cara”
Caira is an Italian adjective, not an Italian name. Cara means dear, and Italians use it constantly to address people and almost never to name them, which is a distinction the American list has cheerfully ignored.
How old is the name Caira?
Caira first appears in US birth records in 1977 — 48 years ago. The typical Caira alive today was born around 2003, making them about 22 years old. About 900 people named Caira are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Caira most popular?
Caira peaked in 1996, reaching #3361 nationally. Today it ranks #10107, 6,746 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From carus to Caira
The story of Caira
English has taken a small vocabulary of Italian endearments and turned them into names: Cara, dear; Bella, beautiful; Mia, mine. In Italian these are the words you use to address someone you already have a name for, and using them as names strikes Italian speakers as odd in roughly the way an American would find a girl called Sweetheart odd. The borrowing is not an error so much as a different practice: English has always been happy to name children with words it finds pleasant in another language, precisely because the meaning is at a comfortable distance. The Latin behind cara is carus, dear or costly, and it is the root of charity, caress and cherish, so the adjective is genuinely old even where the name is not.
Meaningscholars disagree
Italian cara, dear or beloved
Caira is most plausibly a spelling of Cara, the Italian and Latin adjective meaning dear, from carus, which also gives charity, caress and cherish. It may equally be a respelling of Kyra or Keira. Cara is used as a given name in English-speaking countries and only rarely in Italy. The peak is 1996.
How the name formed
- carus
- Cara
- Caira
Related forms: Cara · Kara · Ciara
Pronouncing Caira
KY-ruh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Some read it KAR-uh, following Cara, and the spelling supports both, which is its main weakness.
Nicknames for Caira
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1977
- Most girls named
- 200540 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3361reached in 1996
- Change vs 2024
- −52.6%9 in 2025, from 19
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Caira in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Cara in Italian — related form
- Kara in English — spelling variant
- Ciara in Irish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Florida.
Cairas among us
people named Caira are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 178,585 born in 2025 was named Caira
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Caira
- #10107
- Caira on the 2025 chart
- #752
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Caira went to 9 girls in 2025, but Kaira, Kayra and Khaira and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 6 spellings went to 209, which makes it the 752nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 9,355 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 7,690 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 178,585 for Caira itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Rex test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Caira's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Rex climbed just as high around 1925, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Rex's path sketches the road Caira is walking now.
Caira sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Caira beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Caira in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Five letters and two syllables.
- Cara works as a short form and as a formal version at once.
- The Latin root is documented and gives several familiar English words.
- The spelling has two plausible readings and no standard one.
- Kyra, Keira, Ciara and Cara all sit close to it.
- In Italian it is an adjective rather than a name.
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What they receive
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Caira
Feminine · #10107 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cairas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Caira are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Caira?
- Caira is one of 6 recorded spellings. Kaira is the more common one — 152 births in 2025 against 9 for Caira.
- How popular is the name Caira in 2025?
- Caira ranks #10107 among US girl names in 2025, with 9 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Caira?
- About 1 in every 178,585 US girls born in 2025 was named Caira — 9 in all.
- Will my child share the name Caira with classmates?
- Caira will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Caira
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Berta#10107 · Jettie#10107 · Maye#10107 · Osa#10107 · Fidelia#10107 · Alysa#10107 · Su#10107 · Willie#10107
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Caira? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Caira and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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