Does anyone know for sure where
Kyra came from?
I am trying to find out everything about this name.
Speculations are that it is a variant of
Kira (which is Russian) or
Cyrus (which is Greek) or maybe
Ciara (KEE-ra) which is Irish?
However to me it looks more like it should be KY-ra so I guess relations with
Cyrus make more sense.
Anyone know anything?
What I could find out (I pronounced
Kyra as KY-ra and
Kira,
Keira,
Kiera,
Ciara, Kirra as KEE-ra):
-
Kyra was first used in the US (five births or more) in 1919 with 5 births. It therefore has longer usage in the US than
Kira (at least according to these statistics) which first appeared in 1938 with 5 births, almost 20 years later (
Keira appears first in 1962,
Kiera only appears first in 1963,
Ciara in 1972, Kirra in 1975). Maybe this sort of confirms that it is more likely to have come from
Cyrus?
Cyrus starts appearing in the beginning (1880, first year of statistics). As all of the
Kira and
Ciara variants appeared much later than both
Cyrus and
Kyra.
- this is not really as much evidence as Scotland only has statistics going back to 1974. But
Kyra shows the highest level of popularity in 1974 there as well (
Kyra: 3 births,
Kira: 1 birth,
Kiera: 0 births,
Ciara: 0 births, Kirra: 0 births). Only in the course of the 70s do the other variants become more common (there must have been on namesake in the 70s for
Keira as the name suddenly jumps up quite a bit) then in the early 2000s
Keira becomes super popular because of
Keira Knightley even though in the 90s it already shows potential (my guess is that this was when the Irish
Ciara and variants came over due to the huge popularity in
Ireland).
- in
Ireland Ciara is very traditional and popular reaching #2 at some point. However
Kyra follows a different popularity pattern and doesn't really group in with the other names. Whereas
Ciara,
Kiera,
Keira are all falling rather quickly
Kyra seems to be enjoying the same level of popularity as in previous years which makes me wonder whether the Irish say KY-ra and it is seen as a different name.
-
Kyra Sedgwick (born 1965) seems to be the most famous person named this. She is American and says it like KEE-ra.
- However I watched TV series, movies etc. and it is KY-ra (such as in the recent
Alex Rider Amazon Prime series).
Thoughts?
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https://www.behindthename.com/pnl/6232