Kara (name)


Kara is both a given name and a surname with various, unrelated origins in various cultures.
As an English name, it is usually considered a modern spelling variant of the Italian endearment cara, meaning beloved, or the Irish word cara, meaning friend. Neither Cara nor Kara has been in common use as a name in Italy or Ireland prior to the 20th century, though Kara had been in use as an independent name in the United States since at least the 1890s. It had occasionally been used as a hypocorism for the name Caroline. Actress Bernice Kamiat, who used the stage name Cara Williams, popularized that version of the name in the 1950s and 1960s. The DC Comics character Supergirl, whose original name was Kara Zor-El, debuted in 1959. Both Cara and Kara were used regularly in the Anglosphere and have been regarded as spelling variants of the same name. Kara became the more popular version of the name for American girls by 1967. Other media depictions of Supergirl have continued to draw attention to the name. In Norse mythology, Kára was a valkyrie; in the Scandinavian languages, the name Kára either means "the wild, stormy one" or "curl" or "the curly one".

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Mythical or fictional characters