Tamara
GenderFemale
Origin
Word/nameArabic/Hebrew
Meaning"date" (the fruit), "date palm", "palm tree"
Other names
Related namesTammy, Tamy, Tami, Tammii, Tam

Tamara is a female given name most commonly derived from the Biblical name "Tamar" and in the Arabic from the singular form "Tamra" (Arabic: تَمْرَة tamrah) and the plural form "Tamar" (Arabic: تَمْر tamr), meaning in both Hebrew and Arabic the generic name of the fruit "date", "date palm" or "palm tree".

In central and eastern European countries like Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine it has been a common name for centuries. In Australia it was very popular from the 1960s to 1990s. It used to be a popular name in Soviet Russia.[1]

In the United States, the name was fairly common from the late 1950s to mid 1990s, bolstered by the popularity of the film Tammy and the Bachelor and its theme song (Tammy is commonly a nickname for Tamara). In the US the most girls named Tamara were born in 1970 and the number of Tamaras born per year was greater than 1,000 as late as 1996.[2]

The name is now fairly uncommon in the US: in 2010, the name fell off the Top 1000 SSA Baby Names list, with fewer than 250 baby girls named Tamara that year.[3]

Variants

Variations include Tamar, Temara, Tamra, Tamera, Tamira and Tamora. In North America Tamara is typically pronounced /ˈtæmərə/; in the United Kingdom and Australia it is sometimes pronounced as /təˈmɑːrə/; and in Russia /tɐˈmarə/ (written Тама́ра). In Arabic it is pronounced /tæˈmæːrɐ/ (written تمارا or تمارة). The most common US nickname for Tamara is Tammy or Tam, but other nicknames exist, such as Tatia (თათია) Tamar (თამარ) Tamuna (თამუნა), Tamari (თამარი), Tamriko (თამრიკო) or Tako (თაკო) in Georgia, Toma in Russia, Mara, Tama or Tara.

One notable occurrence of the name 'Tamora' in literature is a character in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. In this play, Tamora is an ambitious and vengeful woman. Her sons plan to rape the daughter of Titus Andronicus and Tamora refuses the girl's pleas to stop them. Titus, in revenge for the brutal rape and disfigurement of his daughter, kills the young men, has them baked into a pie, and serves the pie to Tamora. Titus tells her that she has just eaten her sons immediately before killing her.

The term 'tamarro' entered Italian through the Neapolitan dialect, meaning "lowlife", "scumbag", with a specific bent to people who have a very strong tendency to copy the general mode, have uncultured behaviour and tend to buy and flaunt expensive branded goods.[4]

People with the given name

Fictional characters with the name

See also

References

  1. ↑ https://histrf.ru/read/articles/samye-populyarnye-imena-v-sssr-i-rossiyskoy-federacii
  2. ↑ "Girl Name Tamara - Trends, Comments and Popularity of Tamara".
  3. ↑ "Popular Baby Names".
  4. ↑ https://unaparolaalgiorno.it/significato/tamarro https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ricerca/tamarro/
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