Sahra
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Turkish: desert
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/s̪ahɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sahra is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Afghanistan it is the 8th most common given name.
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 99K
- SESweden1 in 147as Sara
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 Sahra 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 330 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
874,128 named Sarah, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Türkiye, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Sara in ES Spain, TR Türkiye, SI Slovenia and 1 more and Zahra in US United States, NL Netherlands, AF Afghanistan.
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)
Acronym of South African Heritage Resources Agency.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Sahra is read(measured from records)
Sahra is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Turkish45%
desert
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Kır, ova, çöl.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
- French15%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sahra in French.
- English12%
Acronym of South African Heritage Resources Agency.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sahra in Swahili.
- German5.3%
a female given name, variant of Sarah
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sahra 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 874,128as Sarah | 1 in 381 | 873K | Zahra | 330 |
| BR Brazil | — | 304,917as Sara | 1 in 694 | 305K | — | 2 |
| ES Spain | — | 179,954as Sara | 1 in 278 | 180K | Sara | 55 |
| AF Afghanistan | #8 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 251 | — | Zahra | 22 |
| SE Sweden | #265 | 69,262as Sara | 1 in 147 | 69K | Sahra | 39 |
| SI Slovenia | #62 | 9,128as Sara | 1 in 230 | 9.1K | Sara | 53 |
| MK North Macedonia | #22 | 8,590as Сара | 1 in 247 | 8.6K | Sara | 33 |
| TR Türkiye | #570 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Sara | 67 |
| NL Netherlands | #856 | 175 | 1 in 99K | 11K | Zahra | 31 |
874,128 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling sarah. 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); SURS — resident population given names; State Statistical Office — living population names. 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)
Sahra is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Maltese, vigil (private or communal act of devotion at nighttime)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, synonym of hankoaura
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Sahra Wagenknechtb. 1969DEGerman politician (born 1969)
- Sahra Halganb. 1972FRsomali singer
- Sahra Hausmannb. 1973NONorwegian handball player
- Sahra Mirowb. 1984DEGerman politician
- Sahra Şaşb. 1994TRTurkish actor (born 1994)
- Sahra Böhib. 2002CHSwiss association football player
- Sahra Mohamed Ali SamatarSOSomali politician
- Sahra DaugreilhFRFrench actor and film director
- Sahra NoorSOsomali-American nurse and health care executive
- Sahra ArdahESSpanish art director, writer and journalist
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 59 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #8,303 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 944 | #1,764 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 863 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 555 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 554 | #12,434 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 352 | #9,512 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 315 | #19,158 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 175 | #3,934 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 134 | #6,814 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 58 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 43 | #31,614 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 38 | #15,853 |
Reference works 4
- 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
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 Sahra?
- A machine transcription gives /s̪ahɾa/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- Where does the name Sahra come from?
- Acronym of South African Heritage Resources Agency. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Sahra have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 874 thousand people named Sarah, more than in any other country we hold.
- Is Sahra a male or female name?
- Sahra 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 does the name Sahra mean?
- In Turkish, desert
- How common is the name Sahra?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 175 people named Sahra, about 1 in 99 thousand residents.
- How common is Sahra compared with other names?
- In Afghanistan, Sahra is the 8th most common given name of 21,469 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sahra?
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/sahraThe 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, “Sahra” — the 8th most common given name in Afghanistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.