Mitra
Feminine · “contract”
Mitra is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 590 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Mitra is one of a very small number of gods attested in both India and Iran before the two traditions separated, and what the word means is startling for a deity: a contract. Not a place, not a power, not an element. An agreement between people, treated as sacred enough to be a god.
How old is the name Mitra?
Mitra first appears in US birth records in 1961 — 64 years ago. The typical Mitra alive today was born around 1995, making them about 30 years old. About 600 people named Mitra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mitra most popular?
Mitra peaked in 1971, reaching #3508 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 7,409 places below that high. See the whole 1971 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From mitra to Mitra
The story of Mitra
The Rigveda and the Avesta are the two oldest surviving Indo-Iranian texts and they were written after the two peoples had already split, so anything appearing in both is very old indeed. Mitra is one of those things: a god who watches over agreements and punishes those who break them, invoked when a treaty was sworn. The Iranian branch went further. Mithra became the center of a mystery cult that spread through the Roman army, and its underground temples have been dug up from Syria to Hadrian's Wall — soldiers on the edge of an empire worshipping a god of keeping your word. The modern Persian name descends directly from the same root.
Meaning
contract, covenant; friend
Sanskrit mitra means friend or ally, and Avestan mithra means contract or covenant; both come from a shared Indo-Iranian word about binding agreements. The Persian name Mehr, meaning kindness and also the sun, descends from the same word. Modern Mitra is an ordinary Iranian woman's name.
How the name formed
- mitra
- Mithra
- Mitra
Related forms: Mitra · Mitra · Mehr
Pronouncing Mitra
MEE-trah
Two syllables, stress on the first, in Persian and Sanskrit alike. MY-truh, with a long i, is the English reading of the letters and is heard here; it is not how the name is said anywhere it is native.
Nicknames for Mitra
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
- 1961
- Most girls named
- 198617 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3508reached in 1971
- Change vs 2024
- −20.0%8 in 2025, from 10
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.
Mitra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mitra in Persian — same name
- Mitra in Sanskrit — same name
- Mehr in Persian — related form
Mitras among us
people named Mitra are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Mitra
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Lillien test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Mitra's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lillien climbed just as high around 1918, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lillien's path sketches the road Mitra is walking now.
Mitra 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
Mitra beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Mitra in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A documented meaning attested in two of the oldest surviving bodies of text in the world.
- Five letters and two syllables, with nothing hard for an English speaker.
- It is an ordinary current name in Iran rather than a revival or a coinage.
- English readers will say the i as a long vowel, which is not the name in any of its home languages.
- In Sanskrit and in Hindi, Mitra is also a common surname, so it reads as a family name to many people.
- The very few boys given this spelling will be read as girls on paper, though the god was male.
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What they receive
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Mitra
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mitras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Mitra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mitra in 2025?
- Mitra ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Mitra?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Mitra — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Mitra with classmates?
- Mitra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Mitra
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Claribel#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mitra? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Mitra and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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