Tara
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Tara is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Irish Gaelic: ancient home; Sanskrit: king's star; Buddhist goddess.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.3K
- CACanada≈1 in 1.5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #747 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 580 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈560,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Irish Gaelic: ancient home; Sanskrit: king's star; Buddhist goddess.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tara 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 | — | ≈560,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Tara | 22 |
| US United States | #304 | 158,365 | 1 in 2.1K | 158K | Tara | 580 |
| GB United Kingdom | #342 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 8 | Tara | 286 |
| CA Canada | #263 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 5 | Tara | 299 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Tara | 36 |
| AU Australia | #268 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 81 | Tara | 265 |
| IE Ireland | #164 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 59 | Tara | 136 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 1,434 | 1 in 1.5K | 1.5K | — | 26 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)
Tara 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.
Sanskrit: ‘star’ or ‘asterism’, a byname of Durga especially in her meditative and magical guise; also the name of the wife of Brhaspati, preceptor of the gods, and mother of Buddha (the Indian equivalent of the god Mercury); in Mahayana Buddhism, the name of the wife of Buddha, and of a Buddhist goddess; in Jain texts, the name of a female deity.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Sanskrit: 1 probably meaning ‘carrying’, ‘saviour’, an epithet of Rudra, and of Vishnu. 2 ‘shining’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, An Irish place name, associated with the Hill of Tara, seat of ancient Irish kings.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Natesa (N); Rama (N); Siva (N); Visnu (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In English, lang., Central Sulawesi (Celebes)
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Tara Fitzgeraldb. 1967GBEnglish actress (born 1967)
- Carmen Electrab. 1972USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, model, and singer
- Tara Subkoffb. 1972USAmerican actress (born 1972)
- Finty Williamsb. 1972GBnot in their usual nameEnglish actress (born 1972)
- Tara Strongb. 1973CACanadian-American actress
- Tara Reidb. 1975USAmerican actress (born 1975)
- Tara Sandsb. 1975USAmerican voice actress
- Tara Plattb. 1978USAmerican actress
- Tara Lipinskib. 1982USAmerican figure skater (born 1982)
- Tara Westoverb. 1986USAmerican historian and author
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 118 sources across 57 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 158K | #352 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 1.5K | #306 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 1.4K | #169 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 643 | #352 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 322 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 2007 | 81 | #99 |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2019 | 59 | #96 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 51 | — |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 2007 | 50 | — |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — Najpogostejša imena in priimki (population register) | 2024 | 45 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 5 | #789 |
Reference works 8
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- What does the name Tara mean, and where does it come from?
- Irish Gaelic: ancient home; Sanskrit: king's star; Buddhist goddess. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Tara a male or female name?
- Tara 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 Tara?
- In the etymology graph, Tera, Tarah and Tarina are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Tara have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 558 thousand people named Tara in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tara.
- How common is the name Tara?
- In the United States, the national register counted 158,365 people named Tara in 2020, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Tara compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Tara is the 164th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Tara?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/taraThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Tara” — the 164th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.