Cara is an English name, that was inspired by two words from other languages. One is the Irish word for ‘friend’, the other the Italian for ‘beloved’.
Cara is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Cara 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, Cara ranks 760. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Cara. In the entire USA, approximately 48,423 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Cara. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
Cara is an English name, that was inspired by two words from other languages. One is the Irish word for ‘friend’, the other the Italian for ‘beloved’.
Cara first appeared... as a given name in the 19th century.
Everyone knows her, everyone loves her and still she’s different from the mainstream: Cara occurs in every single state of the U.S. 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 Cara is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Cara is not one of those names that one encounters in every neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, is noticeable and special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 48,423 women and girls of all generations bear the name Cara – that is one in 3,184. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in Maryland, where one in 2,066 women and girls is called Cara, while it is particularly rare in North Dakota, where you have to ask an average of 9,661 women for their name to get Cara as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for girls' names. This is because 6.0% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M.
With four letters, the name Cara is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. 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 with 6.0% of all girls' names that begin with a C, this first letter is much more common than the average of all letters. And which girls’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Carol.
If your name is Cara 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 Cara, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Rocket
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Cara
Cara
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
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.
C
A
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. Cara sounds like this:
