Tamara
About 131,703 American babies have been named Tamara since 1917, most of them around 1970. In 2025 it ranked 1,808th. About 121,000 Tamaras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Tamara boys named Tamara
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 131,703
- Estimated living today
- 121,000
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1970
- Best rank
- 79th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,808th
- First recorded
- 1917
- Girls / boys
- 131,286 / 417
How old the living Tamaras are
born that year still alive today
Of the 131,703 babies given the name since 1917, about 121,000 are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 3,000 of them are children and 15,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Hebrew
Of Slavic origin, mainly from name of a 12th-century saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, cognate with English biblical Tamar.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Tamaras
- Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980)Polish painter
- Tamara Karsavina (1885–1978)Russian ballet dancer
- Tamara Todevska (born 1985)Macedonian singer
- Tamara Smirnova (1935–2001)Russian astronomer
- Tamara Press (1937–2021)Soviet track-and-field athlete
- Tamara E. Jernigan (born 1959)astronaut
- Tamara Bykova (born 1958)Soviet high jumper
- Tamara Bunke (1937–1967)Argentinian revolutionary
People named Tamara with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Tamara is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Tamara is most concentrated in South Dakota (1.9×), Alaska (1.9×), Oregon (1.9×), Idaho (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1970
The most popular girls’ names the year Tamara peaked:
Tamara elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria girls | Tamara | 5,811 | 22nd |
| France girls | Tamara | 4,885 | 307th |
| England and Wales girls | Tamara | 3,444 | 116th |
| Switzerland girls | Tamara | 1,620 | 24th |
| Poland girls | Tamara | 1,520 birth registrations | 146th |
| Italy girls | Tamara | 1,211 | — |
| Belgium girls | Tamara | 563 | 226th |
| Scotland girls | Tamara | 448 | 140th |
| Ireland girls | Tamara | 400 | 176th |
| Norway girls | Tamara | 372 | 348th |
| New Zealand girls | Tamara | 312 | 63rd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Tamara | 54 | 147th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Tamara: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Tamara | 1,261 | 0.101% | 24th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Tamara | 314 | 0.072% | 55th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Tamara | 38 | 0.058% | 47th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Tamara | 7 | 0.188% | 4th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Tamara is most concentrated in Schwyz, where 0.12% of children were given it – 43 of them.
Tamara: rank by region
In 2020, Tamara was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Tamara | 839 | 5 |
In 2025, Tamara was given 2 times or more in 4 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Tamara | 244 | 4 |
| Pomorskie | Tamara | 209 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Tamara | 255 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Tamara | 204 | 3 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Tamara by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 52 | 211th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Tamara among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Tamara | 11,321 | 15,190 |
| Finland girls | Tamara | 430 | 676 |
| the Netherlands boys | Tamara | — | 81 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Tamara lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 33,862 women called Tamara were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cádiz | Tamara | 1,476 | 2.303 | 95 |
| Toledo | Tamara | 798 | 2.125 | 101 |
| Lugo | Tamara | 354 | 2.110 | 93 |
| Cantabria | Tamara | 638 | 2.084 | 104 |
| Coruña, A | Tamara | 1,205 | 2.039 | 98 |
| Pontevedra | Tamara | 996 | 2.031 | 107 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Tamara against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.