Ciarra
Feminine · “dark”
Ciarra lands between two names that have nothing to do with each other. Written with one r it is Irish; written this way it slides toward a Spanish word about mountains, and a great many families who use the spelling would be surprised to learn that either language is involved.
How old is the name Ciarra?
Ciarra first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Ciarra alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 3,300 people named Ciarra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Ciarra most popular?
Ciarra peaked in 1997, reaching #956 nationally. See the whole 1997 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Ciara to Ciarra
The story of Ciarra
The Irish name is old and well documented: a feminine built on the word for dark, borne by a seventh-century abbess, and revived in Ireland in the twentieth century. The mountain word came into American use through the American West rather than through Spain, and became a girls' name in the nineteen-seventies. Ciarra appears at the end of that decade, exactly where the two families overlap in sound, and its spelling belongs to neither tradition: Irish would not double the r, and Spanish would not open with a ci. It is an American spelling of a sound that two languages happened to share.
Meaningscholars disagree
dark, dark-haired
If the name is the Irish one, the root means dark and it is the feminine of a common Irish man's name. If it was reached from the mountain word instead, the meaning is entirely different. This spelling belongs cleanly to neither.
How the name formed
- Ciara
- Ciarra
Related forms: Ciara
Pronouncing Ciarra
see-AIR-uh
Three syllables with the weight in the middle. The Irish name is said KEER-uh, with a hard c and two syllables, which is a completely different word.
Nicknames for Ciarra
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
- 1979
- Most girls named
- 1997206 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #956reached in 1997
- Change vs 2021
- +12.5%9 in 2024, from 8
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.
Ciarra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ciara in Irish — related form
Ciarras among us
people named Ciarra are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Ciarra sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Every sound in it is easy for an English speaker and the spelling follows the sound.
- The stress in the middle gives it a lift most names of its length do not have.
- It is genuinely uncommon while being entirely readable.
- Ciara, Sierra, Cierra and Ciarra are all in the record and are confused constantly.
- Irish speakers say the Irish name in a way this spelling does not suggest at all.
- There is no single meaning to pass on, because there is no single source.
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Ciarra
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Ciarras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,300 people named Ciarra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Ciarra in 2025?
- Ciarra is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Ciarra with classmates?
- Ciarra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
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Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Ciarra? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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