Zara is simply an alternative spelling of Zahra/Zahrah. It’s Arabic in origin and this page should acknowledge that rather than describing it as English (modern). It didn’t come from nowhere.
― Anonymous User 1/30/2021
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Similar words with various transcriptions into English, e.g. zarya (Russian) and zahrah (Arabic), mean dawn. Considering the name is much older and more global than just a clothing store, this bright and positive meaning - a new day - could also be responsible for its current popularity.
― Anonymous User 1/24/2021
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I am Jewish and my parents always told me the name meant "to shine brightly" in Hebrew. Then I studied Hebrew. It's a language with sets of three root letters that are made into related verbs, adjectives, and nouns by adding letters around the root letters. To complicate matters, there are several forms of H (Hei, Chet, Chaf) and several silent gutterals that, when added in between or at the end of Zayin Resh, change the meaning of the root.I haven't been able to find reliable information about the Hebrew root, yet, but here's what Google Translate gives me:Zayin-Resh translates to stranger, foreigner, outsider. To make it feminine, one adds a Hei to the masculine form of the word, pronouncing it "Za-RAH." Zayin-Hei-Resh-Hei (which, when vowels are added, is pronounced "Zi-ha-ra" and where we get names like Zahara and Sahara) translates to brightness or radiance. Zayin-Vav(vowel O)-Hei-Resh translates to radiant, incandescent, lustrous.So as best as I can tell, this name from the bastardized Hebrew is intended to mean brightness. I have also found words in my search connected to dawn and blooming.
― Anonymous User 5/31/2018
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My husband saw the name Zara as a child and new he wanted to name his little girl that...42 years later he got that chance. Zara is now one. I did some research and it means Princess in Hebrew and I plan on getting a tattoo of her name in Hebrew spelling. It's quite beautiful. My daughter's middle name is Elizabeth. I named her after an ancestor - Queen Elizabeth the first's cousin, several times removed of course :)