Lara (first name)

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Lara is a female given name .

Origin of the first name

In Roman mythology , according to Ovid , Lara is the name of a water nymph from the Tiber region , who was originally called "Lala" (from Greek λάλα "the talkative, talkative ") because of her vicious loquacity and, after losing her tongue and language, she became the mute underworld deity Tacita (Dea Muta), see Tacita (Mythology) .

In Russian and other Slavic languages , Lara is a short form of the name Larissa (Larisa, Larysa), which in turn comes from Greek and has been the place name of several ancient cities there since ancient times, in particular the capital of Thessaly , today's Larisa , and the castle Larissa of Argos , is known. In mythology, this was associated with the idea of ​​two different nymphs or heroines of the name Larissa, one of which, Argive, according to Hellanikos, was the mother of Pelasgos, while the other, Thessalian, was considered his daughter: see Larissa (mythology) . For the derivation of Lara from the Greek, besides the place name, the Greek λᾱρός “delicious, lovely, pleasant” and λάρος “sea bird, seagull” are taken into account.

In addition to the Greek derivation from Russian Lara, the explanation was also proposed as the Russian short form of the Italian given name Laura , which in turn goes back to the Latin name Laurentia (feminine form of Laurentius "man from Laurentia ").

distribution

In Slavic countries the names Lara and Larissa or their equivalents have been used as first names since the 19th century, in the western world they were created by the character of Larissa / Lara Antipowa from Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Schiwago (1957) or its film adaptation by Popular in 1965.

In Germany, Lara was consistently among the ten most popular female first names from 1999 to 2008. In Switzerland, Lara was the most popular given name of all girls born in 2009.

name day

Since the names Lara and Larissa had no older tradition than Christian baptismal names and no persons with these names have been canonized since the 19th century, there are neither in the Roman Catholic nor in the Orthodox churches saints with these names with feast days for the celebration of the name day . Popular name dictionaries sometimes mention March 26th as the name day, the feast day of an alleged saint Larissa in the Crimea in the 4th century, or refer to saints with distantly similar-sounding names.

Well-known namesake

People with the first name Lara

Fictional people

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jennifer Larson: Greek nymphs: myhts, cult, lore , Oxford University Press, New York [u. a.] 2001, pp. 165f.
  2. ↑ Wilfrreid Seibicke, first names , ed. by the Society for German Language, 2nd, completely revised. Ed., Verlag für Standesamtwesen, Wiesbaden 1991, p. 208 on "Larissa"
  3. ↑ Rosa and Volker Kohlheim, Rosa Kohlheim, Duden - The large first name dictionary , Dudenverlag, Mannheim, 2007, page 258
  4. ^ First name statistics for Lara, Knud Bielefeld
  5. ↑ The most popular first names in Switzerland , article in the Berner Zeitung from August 9, 2010
  6. ↑ Beate Varnhorn: The large lexicon of first names , Wissen-Media-Verlag / Lexikoninstitut Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 2008, p. 314, cf. P. 91
  7. ↑ a b Cornelia Nitsch: Old first names rediscovered , Graefe & Uzer, Munich 2006, p. 76
  8. ↑ Thomas W. Sheehan: Dictionary of patron saints' names , Our Sunday Visitor, Huntington (Ind.) 2001, p. 169

Web links

Wiktionary: Lara  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations