Sarah

The variant Sara, without the final h, is standard in much of continental Europe and the Arab world.

The name belongs first to the matriarch Sarah, wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac in the Book of Genesis.

Originally called Sarai, her name was changed by God to Sarah in Genesis 17 to mark her role as “mother of nations.” She is venerated in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, where she is known as Sāra.

Sarah is also the name of the apocryphal heroine in the Book of Tobit and of Sara la Kali, the patron of Romani Christians, honored each May at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in Provence.

Royal and aristocratic use of Sarah dates from the late medieval period, though the name was relatively uncommon in Christian Europe until the Protestant Reformation, when reformers preferred Old Testament names.

In England it became extremely popular in the seventeenth century.

Notable bearers include Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744), the powerful confidante of Queen Anne, and Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), the legendary French actress.

Literary heroines include the title character of John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969).

Sarah ranked inside the United States Social Security Administration top 10 throughout the 1880s, declined through the early twentieth century, and was the most popular girls’ name in the country from 1978 through 1989.

It currently sits within the top 100, having sustained continuous top-200 use for the entire 144 years of available SSA records, an unmatched achievement.

The name remains in the top 50 across most English-speaking countries and is widely used in France, Germany, Israel, and the Arab world, making it one of the most truly international personal names in active use.