As an English name, Sierra is a modern creation and based on the Spanish word for ‘mountain range’.
Sierra is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Sierra isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Sierra ranks 388. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 5 were named Sierra. In the entire USA, approximately 97,476 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Sierra. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
As an English name, Sierra is a modern creation and based on the Spanish word for ‘mountain range’.
In the US,... this name is in use since the 1970s.
This was a real surprise! Sierra is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off at the end of the 20th century. According to our SmartGenius statistics, it reached its highest rank at #48 in the year 1999, when 5,724 parents chose this name for their newborn daughter. This made Sierra much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. Now, this name seems to have found its place and has established itself in the beginning of the 21st century as well.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Sierra was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Sierra ranked 503 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 548 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Sierra will remain a universally popular name.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Sierra. Because: There are women and girls named Sierra in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Sierra is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Nevada, where Sierra ranks on place 100. The greatest chance of meeting Sierra, however, is in Alaska, where one in 416 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 1,582 women and girls and in Rhode Island, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 4,696 women and girls for their name before you once get Sierra as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter S is a very popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 9.3% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letter A is more common for girls' names.
With six letters, the name Sierra is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 9.3% of all girls' names start with an S, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And by the way: Of all the girls' names that start with an S, Susan is the most common.
If your name is Sierra and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Sierra, you can simply say:
Sun
Igloo
Elephant
Rocket
Rocket
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Sierra
Sierra
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
S
I
E
R
R
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
S
I
E
R
R
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Sierra sounds like this:
