Mara can be either a surname or a female first name. As a surname, it may be:
Irish: a shortened form of O’Mara;
Hungarian: from a pet form of the personal names Márkus (Hungarian form of Marcus or Mark) or Márton (Hungarian form of Martin), or from a short form of the old ecclesiastical name Marcel;
Czech (Mára): from a pet form of the personal name Marek or Martin.
Mara as a female first name is pronounced MAHR-ah most of the time, but can be pronounced as rhyming with Sarah in Jewish-American and Southern United States culture. It is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Mara is "bitter", which carries the implication "strength". Biblical: Naomi, mother-in-law of Ruth, claimed the name Mara as an expression of grief after the deaths of her husband and sons. It also means "Lady" in Aramaic, because Mar means "Lord", and is a title of bishops in the Syriac Christian church. It is also the name of a bitter lake in the Bible, and a title of the Kabbalistic sephira Binah. Mara means joy in Arabic and can be a unisex name. (Ar:مرح)
May also be used as a Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek or Eastern European variant of Mary, Marianna, Maria, Marzanna and as a short form of Tamara. It is a variant of Maura, an Anglicization of the Irish name Máire, the Irish name of Mary, or the Scottish name Moira. It can also be a feminine version of Mauro, meaning a dark-skinned person. In Hindu, and Southeast Asian Buddhist cultures, it is etymologically related to the Sanskrit terms Mala (rosary), Mallika (jasmine) or Mayura (peacock) and is a unisex name or a surname, etymologically unrelated to anything demonic in Sino-Tibetan and modern Indic languages because the letters R and L are sometimes conflated (cf. in Japanese). It is a popular name in Latin America and the United States, for it has been in the top 1000 in the United States since 1950.
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