Tara (name)

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Tara
Gender:	Unisex
Origin:	Unknown
Meaning:	"Star" "Goddess of the sea" "Shining" "A hill where Kings met"

Tara is a given name with multiple meanings in different cultures.

It is also sometimes a nickname for Tamara, as an alternative to Tammy. In the Royal Engineers it is a common for a Sergeant Major to be referred to as Tara, after the wrestler who was a Sergeant Major and served in Burma during World War II, although the practice is now dying out.

The name is somewhat dated in the United States, being most popular during the 1970s (a similar case with Tamara), but is still very popular in Australia. Its American popularity was probably due to Tara being the name of the family plantation in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind. It was the name of Tara King, a character in the 1960s British television The Avengers. It was also the name of Tara Martin, a popular character on the American soap opera All My Children in the early 1970s. These characters probably contributed to the name's rise in popularity during the 1970s. In Ireland, from 2000-2005 it has ranked between the 30th and 40th most popular girl's name.

The name Tara is accepted as being exclusively a female name among western culture, and is primarily used in this regard in the east, due to its connection to several goddesses. For instance, Tara is a female Buddha in Buddhism and a goddess in Hinduism.

[edit] Meanings in different languages

Hindi, Persian, Punjabi, Kurdish: Star

Sanskrit: Shining. See Tara in Hinduism

Irish Gaelic: refers to the Hill of Tara, or Teamhair na Rí, the seat of the kings of Ireland from neolithic times (~5,000 BC) to the 6th century or later. With this reference, Tara is taken to mean rocky pinnacle, hill or crag.

Scottish: A hill where the kings met. (This may be a corruption of the Irish form).