Cierra
Feminine · “mountain range”
Cierra is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 27,623 girls against 36 boys since 1880.
Cierra is Sierra with a C — a Spanish word for a mountain range, named for the saw-toothed shape of a ridge line against the sky.
How old is the name Cierra?
Cierra first appears in US birth records in 1978 — 47 years ago. The typical Cierra alive today was born around 1997, making them about 28 years old. About 27,000 people named Cierra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cierra most popular?
Cierra peaked in 1997, reaching #180 nationally. Today it ranks #2719, 2,539 places below that high. See the whole 1997 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From serra to Cierra
The story of Cierra
Sierra entered American given-name use in the 1970s as one of a set of Spanish and Western place words — Sierra, Savannah, Dakota, Cheyenne — that became names for girls. Respellings followed at once, and Cierra appears in the registers from the 1980s, peaking in the mid-1990s alongside Sierra itself.
Meaningscholars disagree
mountain range
Read as a respelling of Sierra, the meaning is the Spanish sierra, 'saw' and hence 'mountain range', from the Latin serra. The C spelling instead suggests the Spanish verb cerrar, 'to close', which is unlikely to have been intended. The Sierra reading is much the better supported.
How the name formed
- serra
- sierra
- Sierra
- Cierra
Related forms: Sierra · Sierra · Ciera
Pronouncing Cierra
see-AIR-uh
Three syllables, stress in the middle. Cierra and Sierra are said identically.
Nicknames for Cierra
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
- 1978
- Most girls named
- 19981,687 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #180reached in 1997
- Change vs 2024
- +10.5%63 in 2025, from 57
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.
Cierra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Sierra in English — spelling variant
- Sierra in Spanish — related form
- Ciera in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, New York.
Cierras among us
people named Cierra are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 25,512 born in 2025 was named Cierra
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cierra
- #2719
- Cierra on the 2025 chart
- #483
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cierra went to 63 girls in 2025, but Sierra, Ciera and Siera and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 5 spellings went to 559, which makes it the 483rd most-given girls’ name of the year — 2,236 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 2,875 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 25,512 for Cierra 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 Sonja test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cierra's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Sonja climbed just as high around 1938, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Sonja's path sketches the road Cierra is walking now.
Cierra 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
Where Cierra is headed
Cierra should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Cierra beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cierra in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The mountain-range meaning is concrete and vivid, and the saw image behind it is genuinely good.
- Three syllables with a strong middle, a rhythm that carries well.
- Cici works immediately as a short form.
- Sierra is the standard spelling and this one obscures the Spanish word behind it.
- It is closely dated to the 1990s in American records.
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What they receive
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Cierra
Feminine · #2719 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cierras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 27,000 people named Cierra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cierra?
- Cierra is one of 5 recorded spellings. Sierra is the more common one — 476 births in 2025 against 63 for Cierra.
- How popular is the name Cierra in 2025?
- Cierra ranks #2719 among US girl names in 2025, with 63 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cierra?
- About 1 in every 25,512 US girls born in 2025 was named Cierra — 63 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cierra with classmates?
- Cierra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cierra
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ryver#2719 · Kaliana#2719 · Morrigan#2719 · Asher#2719 · Aditi#2719 · Carley#2719 · Betsy#2719 · Emy#2719
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cierra? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cierra and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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