Katara is an American invented name created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino for *Avatar: The Last Airbender* (2005-2008) — inspired by Inuit naming traditions and possibly related to the Inuit/Yupik word *qattaq* ("waterbender" / "one who pours"). **Katara** — **Southern Water Tribe waterbender and central protagonist of Nickelodeon's *Avatar: The Last Airbender* (2005-2008); voiced by Mae Whitman across all 61 episodes; the 14-year-old who finds Aang (the Avatar) frozen in the iceberg and accompanies him on his journey to defeat the Fire Nation**. **One of the most-acclaimed female animated leads of the 21st century — *Avatar: The Last Airbender* is on *Time* magazine's list of the 100 Best TV Shows of All Time and routinely tops critic-poll rankings of the greatest animated series ever made**. **Katara's character arc — from grieving daughter of a war martyr to powerful waterbending master and eventually wife of Aang — has been credited with influencing a generation of "strong female lead" animation in the West**. **Played by Kiawentiio in Netflix's 2024 live-action *Avatar: The Last Airbender* (2024-present) and by Nicola Peltz in M. Night Shyamalan's 2010 film (widely panned)**. **Katara remains a foundational character in animation studies; her healing-and-fighting hybrid character pattern preceded and influenced *Steven Universe*, *The Owl House*, and *Korra***.
Featured throughout 2000s-2020s American animation.
Katara reduces to five — the number of waterbending.