Mara can be either a surname or a (usually female) first name. Mara is Irish for ocean.
As a surname, it may be:
Hungarian: from a pet form of the personal names Mária, Márkus (Hungarian form of Marcus or Mark) or Márton (Hungarian form of Martin), or from a short form of the old ecclesiastical name
Marcel;
Czech (Mára): from a pet form of the personal name Marek or Martin.
Mara as a female first name is pronounced MAHR-ah most of the time, but can be pronounced as rhyming with
Sarah in
Jewish-American and
Southern United States culture. It is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Mara is "bitter," which carries the implication "strength." The biblical
Naomi, mother-in-law of Ruth, claimed the name Mara (מרא) as an expression of grief after the deaths of her husband and sons. It also means "Lady" in Aramaic, because Mar means "Lord", and is a title of bishops in the
Syriac Christian church.[1] It is also the name of a
bitter lake in the Bible, and a title of the
KabbalisticsephiraBinah. Mara (pronounced as Maraa) can also mean woman or lady in some Arabic dialects, but it is not used an as an Arab name. (Ar: مرا)[citation needed]. In ancient Egypt, it meant "The truth of God Ra" Ma for Truth ('Ma-at') and Ra the God of the Sun. [citation needed]
The name may also be a Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek or East European variant of
Mary,
Marianna,
Maria,
Marzanna and as a short form of
Tamara. It is a variant of
Maura, an Anglicization of the Irish name
Máire, the Irish name of Mary, or the Scottish name
Moira. It can also be a feminine version of
Mauro, meaning a dark-skinned person. In
Hindu, and Southeast Asian
Buddhist cultures, it is etymologically related to the Sanskrit terms
Mala (rosary),
Mallika (jasmine) or Mayura (peacock) and is a unisex name or a surname, etymologically unrelated to anything demonic in
Sino-Tibetan and modern
Indic languages because the letters R and L are sometimes conflated (cf.
in Japanese). It is a popular name in Latin America and the United States, for it has been in the top 1000 in the United States since 1950.[2][3]
This page or section lists people that share the same
given name or the same
family name. If an
internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article.