Nira
Feminine · “a ploughed field”
Nira is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 804 girls against 6 boys since 1880.
Nira is a ploughed field in Hebrew: not a wild place but a worked one, ground that has been broken and made ready. It is one of a set of modern Hebrew names taken from agriculture, given in the decades when a language was being made to live again alongside a country being farmed.
How old is the name Nira?
Nira first appears in US birth records in 1917 — 108 years ago. The typical Nira alive today was born around 1957, making them about 68 years old. About 500 people named Nira are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Nira most popular?
Nira peaked in 1933, reaching #463 nationally. Today it ranks #4878, 4,415 places below that high. See the whole 1933 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From nir to Nira
The story of Nira
Modern Hebrew naming in the twentieth century turned deliberately toward the land: Nir, Nira, Gefen, Alon and Tamar all name plants, ground or growth, and they were given in place of the diaspora names families were leaving behind. Nira belongs to that movement. Quite separately, American records from the nineteenth century show Nira as a short form of longer names ending in -ira, and those two histories meet on the page without ever having met anywhere else.
Meaningscholars disagree
a ploughed field; tilled ground
Hebrew nir, a ploughed field or fallow broken for sowing, gives the feminine Nira, and that is the standard reading for the modern Hebrew name. Separately, the same spelling appears in American records as a clipping of Elvira and Almira, which is a different road entirely and much older in this country.
How the name formed
- nir
- Nira
Related forms: נירה
Pronouncing Nira
NEE-rah
Two syllables, stress in front in English use; Hebrew puts it at the end, nee-RAH. Both are used and neither is a correction of the other.
Nicknames for Nira
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
- 1917
- Most girls named
- 1933201 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #463reached in 1933
- Change vs 2024
- +68.8%27 in 2025, from 16
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.
Nira in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- נירה in Hebrew — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas.
Niras among us
people named Nira are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 59,528 born in 2025 was named Nira
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Nira
- #4878
- Nira on the 2025 chart
- #773
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Nira went to 27 girls in 2025, but Nyra and Nyrah are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 187, which makes it the 773rd most-given girls’ name of the year — 4,105 places above the chart.
- Nyra147
- Nira27
- Nyrah13
About 1 girl in 8,595 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 59,528 for Nira 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 Idell test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Nira's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Idell climbed just as high around 1910, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Idell's path sketches the road Nira is walking now.
Nira 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 Nira is headed
Nira should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Nira beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Nira in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Four letters and two open syllables: easy in Hebrew, English and Spanish alike.
- The meaning is concrete and unusual: worked ground rather than a virtue.
- It has a documented American record as well as a modern Israeli one.
- Nira, Nyra and Neera are close enough to be substituted in writing.
- The stress differs between Hebrew and English, so the name is said two ways.
- It is short enough to offer nothing to shorten and no formal register.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Nira
Feminine · #4878 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Niras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Nira are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Nira?
- Nira is one of 3 recorded spellings. Nyra is the more common one — 147 births in 2025 against 27 for Nira.
- How popular is the name Nira in 2025?
- Nira ranks #4878 among US girl names in 2025, with 27 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Nira?
- About 1 in every 59,528 US girls born in 2025 was named Nira — 27 in all.
- Will my child share the name Nira with classmates?
- Nira will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Nira
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Maribelle#4878 · Evangelia#4878 · Pari#4878 · Zoraya#4878 · Saba#4878 · Chyna#4878 · Odyssey#4878 · Zana#4878
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Nira? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Nira and another name?
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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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