Cara
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A successor of Mahā Sammata and a member of the Sākya tribe; father of Upacara (Mhv.ff.2; Dpv.i.5; DA.i.258; SnA.i.352)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kaɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cara is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 31K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 3.6Kas Kara
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.9Kas Kara
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Cara itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 537 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 31K (inferred from the name graph)
≈220,000 named Kara, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kara in US United States, AU Australia, CA Canada and 1 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A successor of Mahā Sammata and a member of the Sākya tribe; father of Upacara (Mhv.ff.2; Dpv.i.5; DA.i.258; SnA.i.352).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol I (A-Dh)
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cara counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Cara | 36 |
| US United States | #412 | 93,447as Kara | 1 in 3.6K | 93K | Kara | 537 |
| GB United Kingdom | #447 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 6K | 52 | Cara | 232 |
| CA Canada | #418 | ≈7,600 est. | ≈1 in 5K | 6 | Kara | 217 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Cara | 15 |
| AU Australia | #372 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 62 | Kara | 182 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Cara | 73 |
| NZ New Zealand | #333 | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | 12 | Kara | 92 |
| IE Ireland | #272 | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 176 | Cara | 82 |
| FI Finland | — | 88 | 1 in 63K | 634 | Cara | 16 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Cara is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
20th-century coinage, from the Italian term of endearment cara ‘beloved’ or the Irish Gaelic vocabulary word cara ‘friend’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In pi, A Yakkha chieftain to be invoked by followers of the Buddha in times of need.’ D . iii. 205; the P.T.S. edition calls him Māṇicara as does the P.T.S. edition of the commentary (D. iff. 970); but the Sinhalese edition, both text and com¬ mentary, divides this name into two thus : Maṇi and Cara.
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol I (A-Dh)
In English, A female given name originating as a coinage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, do lat. cara, querida; fem. de Caro
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In French, Du latin cara, « chère, aimée ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Cara Williamsb. 1925USAmerican actress (1925–2021)
- Carly Fiorinab. 1954USnot in their usual nameAmerican businesswoman and politician
- Cara Seymourb. 1964GBBritish actress
- Cara Buonob. 1971USAmerican actress, screenwriter, and director
- Cara Pifkob. 1976CACanadian actress
- Cara Blackb. 1979ZWZimbabwean tennis player
- Cara Horganb. 1984GBBritish actress
- Cara Cunninghamb. 1987USAmerican Internet personality, songwriter, and recording artist
- Cara Theoboldb. 1990GBBritish actress
- Cara Delevingneb. 1992GBEnglish model and actor (born 1992)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 85 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 48K | #927 |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2019 | 176 | #31 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 168 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 134 | #2,361 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 93 | #927 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 88 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 52 | #25 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1986 | 38 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 20 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 20 | #19,897 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 19 | #196 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2025 | 10 | — |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Cara?
- A machine transcription gives /kaɹə/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Cara mean, and where does it come from?
- A successor of Mahā Sammata and a member of the Sākya tribe; father of Upacara (Mhv.ff.2; Dpv.i.5; DA.i.258; SnA.i.352). Recorded by Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol I (A-Dh).
- Is Cara a male or female name?
- Cara is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Cara?
- In the etymology graph, Cheryl, Carina and Kara are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Cara have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 218 thousand people named Kara in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Cara?
- In Finland, the national register counted 88 people named Cara, about 1 in 63 thousand residents.
- How common is Cara compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Cara is the 272nd most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cara?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/caraThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Cara” — the 272nd most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.