Ara
Ara is a girl's name that peaked in 2022, when it was the 2,364th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 3,249th. About 2,900 Aras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 29.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ara boys named Ara
Girls and boys called Ara
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Ara crossed from boys to girls in 1981, having already crossed in 1973, and has stayed there for 10 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 71% girls, and in 2025 it was 83%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 90 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,866
- Estimated living today
- 2,900
- Median age today
- 29
- Peak year
- 2022
- Best rank
- 2,364th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,249th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 3,565 / 1,301
How old the living Aras are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,866 babies given the name since 1880, about 2,900 are alive — 60 in every hundred. Roughly 1,100 of them are children and 310 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1996 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Armenian
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Aras
- Ara Güler (1928–2018)Turkish photographer
- Ara Abrahamian (born 1975)Swedish Greco-Roman wrestler
- Ara Malikian (born 1968)Armenian musician
- Ara Harutyunyan (1928–1999)Soviet sculptor and artist
- Ara Ayvazyan (born 1969)Armenian diplomat
- Ara Parseghian (1923–2017)American football player and coach
- Ara Papian (born 1961)Armenian diplomat
- Ara Hakobyan (born 1980)Armenian association football player
People named Ara with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ara is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ara is most concentrated in California (4.9×), Alabama (3.3×), Texas (3.1×), Tennessee (1.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2022
The most popular girls’ names the year Ara peaked:
Ara elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Ara | 107 | 2,286th |
| England and Wales boys | Ara | 89 | 2,023rd |
| Scotland girls | Ara | 16 | 666th |
| France boys | Ara | 5 | 925th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Ara | 3 | 397th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Ara among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Ara | 31 | 45 |
| Finland girls | Ara | 7 | 19 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Ara lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 626 women called Ara were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huesca | Ara | 85 | 0.753 | 192 |
| Zaragoza | Ara | 145 | 0.285 | 329 |
| Teruel | Ara | 13 | 0.195 | 458 |
| Badajoz | Ara | 60 | 0.178 | 443 |
| Navarra | Ara | 26 | 0.075 | 988 |
| Rioja, La | Ara | 7 | 0.042 | 1,379 |
Listed in 20 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 32 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Ara against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.