Entry № 11686 · Arabic origin

Yara Yara — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ YAH-rah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Arabic
Meaning
"Friend, small butterfly"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Modern (Arabic)

A name that means "friend, small butterfly".

Yara (يارا) has multiple parallel meanings across languages. In Arabic, it means "small butterfly." In Persian, it derives from the word for "friend" or "helper." In some Brazilian Indigenous traditions (Tupi), Iara is a water spirit of the Amazon.

Yara is one of the most popular girl names in the Arab world today and is rising in the West. In Sweden it has been in the top 100 for years. Today it sits in the U.S. top 350 and is climbing rapidly.

Friend, small butterfly — a Arabic name.

The name in its native script.

يارا
Transliteration
Yārā
Pronunciation
/ ˈjɑː.rə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Yara stands.

Yara 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.

Yaras before her.

Real people
Yara Shahidi
American actress, known for Black-ish and Grown-ish.
born 2000
In fiction
Iara
Water spirit of Brazilian Tupi mythology.
Brazilian folklore

Names connected to Yara.

The number behind Yara.

9

The Giver

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Yara reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.