Bara

loc · Latin script

Meaning: Madagascar ethnic group; Kiswahili: 'continent, mainland'; Hebrew female name: 'to choose'

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/bæɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Bara is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India.

rarermore common
  • INIndia
  • PKPakistan

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

India (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
78 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Madagascar ethnic group; Kiswahili: 'continent, mainland'; Hebrew female name: 'to choose'

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Bara counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Bara is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—5.3KBara78
PK Pakistan——Bara15
CZ Czechia—7.6K——
HR Croatia—3.5K——
US United States—2.3K—32
PL Poland—800——

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; MVČR — living population register 2017; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Bara is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name20 spellings in the group

    Also written Bàrrà, Bàra, Barra, Bará, Бара

  • French given name17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Bára, Bâřā, Bârâ, Bârà, Bârå

  • English given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Sweden

    Also written Bára, Bara', Bará, Barâ, Bāra

  • a separate name11 spellings in the group

    Also written Bǎrǎ, Bǎra, Bára, Bâră, Barà

  • Arabic given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan

    Also written Bara', Bar'A, Bara’, Bârâ, Bàrà

  • Spanish surname28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Bará, Barã, Barà, Bára, Băra

  • Indonesian given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Bara', Bâŕã, Bãřã, Bará, Bára

  • Polish name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Bāra, Bára, Barà

70 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Bara is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • locative name from Bara, the name of an ancient manor and parish in E Lothian, recorded as Barewe and Berewe in the early 13th century (Saint Andrews Charters).

    as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

  • In English, Tiieda, US actress

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • to choose.

    as a nameAfrican Names

  • In men, and inér., to miss one’s aim. ‘Tibara peléi ma, They missed the road

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In English, A genre of homoerotic media, usually also pornographic, typically created by gay men and targeted at gay men in Japan.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

17001800190020002100Joseph Barra, b. 1779Jules Bara, b. 1835Theda Bara, b. 1885Margit Bara, b. 1928Tina Bara, b. 1962Cyrille Bara, b. 1973Céline Bara, b. 1978Micaela Bara, b. 1984Irina Maria Bara, b. 1995Bara Sapoko Ndiaye, b. 2007

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 74 sources across 38 countries.

Official registers attesting Bara
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—5.3K#1,504
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.3K#12,590
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.8K#15,792
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.3K#20,515
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026800—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—800#3,878
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026795—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—795#3,998
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)202133—
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—8#94,579

Reference works 9

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce Bara?
A machine transcription gives /bæɹə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
What does the name Bara mean, and where does it come from?
Madagascar ethnic group; Kiswahili: 'continent, mainland'; Hebrew female name: 'to choose' Recorded by African Names.
In which country does Bara have the most bearers?
Bara is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled bara.

What do you want to know about Bara?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bara

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Bara”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bara parses inside a full name →