Annora

My name is Anora. I have had the name for a little over 40 years now. I have never met anyone else in person with my name. My mother found the name in a baby book of names under the derivative of Ann. It was spelled Annora. She liked it with just one "n" and I am happy she did for most people that have never spelled it before will not guess it with two. My mom looked up the name and researched it and told me it meant: grace, honor and prayer. Over the years I have come across more meanings. If you look at the name Ann and Ora, Ann means grace and Ora to illuminate. So you could say Anora means to illuminate grace. An islander once told me in his native tongue that my name meant beautiful flower. And I once came across a recording of a Native American Tribe with the spelling of Anorah that meant Wildflower. All in all, I love that name and am very happy that I was so blessed to have it.

While Annora certainly sounds like it's a variant of Honora, there is the problem that Honora was not really used in England before the late 1500's when it started first as Honor/Honour, then Honora and Honoria. Whether it came to England with the Normans or not, its modern popularity was mostly as a virtue name, post-Reformation. I think Annora's medieval popularity only makes sense as a form of Alianora, i.e. Eleanor, an extremely popular name during those times, with many other early variants: Annot (not from Anna apparently), Nell, Elen (not Helen), etc.

Annora can also mean 'the light' in Arabic. It comes from the words 'An', meaning 'the', and 'nura', light.