Myra
Meaning
an English spelling some families borrow for Meera (Sanskrit mīra, "sea, ocean"); as an English name, a 17th-century literary coinage
The story
Myra is a poet's invention that outgrew its inventor: the seventeenth-century English poet Fulke Greville coined it, Behind the Name suggests from Latin myrra, myrrh, unless he simply rearranged the letters of Mary. Americans took to it early and hard: nearly nine thousand girls in the 1940s and 10,378 in the 1950s alone, then the long vintage slide to about 2,450 in the 2000s, and then the turn every revival watcher knows: 4,594 girls in the 2010s, with about 3,000 so far this decade. Some Indian American families reach the same four letters from the other direction, as an English-friendly spelling of Meera, Sanskrit mira, sea, ocean, the name of the sixteenth-century Indian princess who devoted her life to Krishna. A literary coinage on one side, an ancient devotion on the other, and between them a name having its second American century.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Myra peaked in the 1890s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
67 people · the #54,512 first name in Brazil · median age 30
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Myra deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Myra truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Myra fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Indian baby names · Indian American baby names · Short names
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