Akari is a Japanese name written 灯 (lamp, light) or 明里 (bright + village).
Akari is rising in popularity in Japan as part of the broader move away from -ko endings to softer, more poetic names. The Isamu Noguchi-designed paper lanterns are also called akari — making the name carry the image of a glowing paper sphere.
Akari does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
—
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Akari reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.