Sierra
Feminine · Latin roots · “mountain range”
Sierra is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 100,597 girls against 269 boys since 1880.
Sierra is the Spanish word for a mountain range — the saw-toothed kind, ridge after ridge against the sky. It reached American English through maps: the Sierra Nevada of Andalusia, then the Sierra Nevada of California, then the Sierra Madre. Said aloud it opens wide in the middle and lands soft, three syllables that most English speakers read correctly on the first try.
How old is the name Sierra?
Sierra first appears in US birth records in 1940 — 85 years ago. The typical Sierra alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 99,000 people named Sierra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sierra most popular?
Sierra peaked in 1999, reaching #49 nationally. Today it ranks #614, 565 places below that high. See the whole 1999 chart.
Where it comes from
From serra (Latin, 'saw') to Sierra
The story of Sierra
The word is Latin serra, a saw, which Spanish turned into sierra and used for jagged mountain chains. Spanish speakers carried it across the Atlantic and left it on the map of the Americas — the Sierra Madre, the Sierra Nevada of California, and dozens of smaller ranges besides. From the map it moved onto birth certificates in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century, part of the same broad turn toward landscape and place names that also brought Savannah and Dakota into use. Its strongest footing today is in California, Texas and New York, the same ground where the Spanish word never stopped being a word.
Meaning
mountain range; literally 'saw'
Spanish sierra comes from Latin serra, 'saw' — the word was applied to ridgelines that look toothed against the horizon.
How the name formed
- serraLatin, 'saw'
- sierraSpanish, 'mountain range'
- Sierra
Related forms: Sierra · Serra · Serra · Serra
Pronouncing Sierra
see-AIR-uh
In Spanish the r is trilled: SYEH-rrah. Both are correct for the same name; English speakers almost never need it spelled out.
Nicknames for Sierra
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
- 1940
- Most girls named
- 19995,715 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #49reached in 1999
- Change vs 2023
- −9.3%476 in 2025, from 525
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.
Sierra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Sierra in Spanish — same name
- Serra in Portuguese — related form
- Serra in Italian — related form
- Serra in Catalan — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Sierras among us
people named Sierra are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 3,377 born in 2025 was named Sierra
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Sierra
- #614
- Sierra on the 2025 chart
- #483
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Sierra went to 476 girls in 2025, but Cierra, 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 — 131 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 2,875 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 3,377 for Sierra 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 Darlene test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sierra's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Darlene climbed just as high around 1958, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Darlene's path sketches the road Sierra is walking now.
Sierra is coming down from a big peak (#49 in 1999). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Sierra is headed
Sierra should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Sierra beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sierra in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The spelling is already fixed in English by maps, parks and place names, so it is read and written correctly with little explanation.
- Fully at home in both English and Spanish, with no change of spelling — useful in bilingual families.
- It is also the NATO alphabet word for the letter S, which makes it unusually easy to say clearly over a phone.
- Familiar to adults everywhere without being common among children right now.
- It is a word before it is a name, and a well-branded one: the Sierra Club, Sierra Nevada beer, a GMC truck. Most people hear the name first, but the associations are there.
- Because so many bearers are now grown, it can read as a name belonging to a particular cohort of adults rather than to babies — that fades as the cycle turns, but it is true at the moment.
- It resists shortening. Sierra tends to stay Sierra, which suits some families and frustrates others who like having a nickname in reserve.
- Occasional mix-ups in writing with Ciara and with the misspelling Siera, though hearing it usually settles the question.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Sierra
Feminine · Latin roots · #614 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Sierras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 99,000 people named Sierra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Sierra?
- Sierra is the most-used spelling in US records — 476 of the 559 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Cierra, Ciera, Siera and Sierrah.
- How popular is the name Sierra in 2025?
- Sierra ranks #614 among US girl names in 2025, with 476 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Sierra?
- About 1 in every 3,377 US girls born in 2025 was named Sierra — 476 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sierra with classmates?
- Sierra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Sierra
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ari#614 · Ariya#614 · Estrella#612 · Halo#612 · Leyla#611 · Marie#617 · Campbell#617 · Siena#610
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sierra? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sierra and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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