Adara

Meaning of Adara

Adara—pronounced ah-dah-RAH in Hebrew, ah-DAH-rah in Spanish, and uh-DAR-uh (/əˈdɑrə/) in English—springs from the Hebrew verb “’adar,” a term that scholars gloss as “to be exalted” or “to adorn,” so the name carries both the lustre of nobility and the delicate shimmer of an ornament; intriguingly, a cognate form, Adhara, also designates the brilliant ε Canis Majoris, a star whose blue-white light once guided Mediterranean navigators and still adorns celestial charts. In the Spanish-speaking world, the name has been embraced with a melodic softness that evokes the Latin sensibility of combining fuerza and belleza, and this cross-cultural portability may explain its slow yet steady ascent on U.S. birth registers—from a mere five occurrences in 1981 to over two hundred in each of the last two recorded years—suggesting a quiet but persistent orbit toward mainstream recognition. Thus, Adara offers parents a compact constellation of meanings: linguistic depth, astronomical romance, and statistical evidence of upward momentum, all contained in three graceful syllables.