Lara

At the 2020 census, 83,110 Americans bore the surname Lara — 374th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 3,596.

By the numbers

People: 83,110
Rank: 374th
How common: 1 in 3,596
Per 100,000: 27.8

Where the name comes from

Anglicized from Russian Ла́ра, a pet form of Larissa, known from the novel (1957) and film (1965) Dr Zhivago.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Lara described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Hispanic or Latino 92.2%
White, not Hispanic 5.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.3%
Black, not Hispanic 0.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 0.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Lara

Alexandra Maria Lara (born 1978)German actress
Brian Lara (born 1969)West Indian cricketer
Rodrigo Lara (1946–1984)Colombian lawyer and politician
Joe Lara (1962–2021)American actor
Christian Lara (born 1980)Ecuadorian footballer
Rosalio Lara (1922–2007)Venezuelan Catholic cardinal
Daniel García Lara (born 1974)Spanish footballer
Diógenes Lara (1902–1968)Bolivian footballer

People named Lara with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Lara

Also a first name

Lara has been given to 30,202 American babies as a first name since 1887, peaking in 1969. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.