Girl · Ancient Greek, through Latin
Barbara
Say it: BAR-buh-ruh
Meaning
Greek barbara, 'foreign woman'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Popular in medieval Europe and very common in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.
Its wave through time
A fashion of the 1930s
In the United States
- 1,439,185 babies given this name since 1880
- At its height in 1938, about 1 in 28 girls
- 289 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- The Renaissance1400 to 1600
- The Age of Revolutions1750 to 1837
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
Early ChristianEnglishFrenchSpanishItalianGermanPolishRussianHungarianAmericanCroatianLatin
The family of the name
Other spellings: Barbra, Barbary, Basia
| French | Barbe |
|---|---|
| Spanish | Bárbara |
| Italian | Barbara |
| Portuguese | Bárbara |
| German | Barbara |
| Polish | Barbara |
| Russian | Varvara |
| Hungarian | Borbála |
Famous bearers
- Barbara, legendary virgin martyr and patron of miners and artillerymen
- Barbara Radziwiłł, Queen of Poland
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
- Parish baptism registers
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.