Zara

Zara is most commonly traced to Arabic Zahra, meaning flower or blossom, and has been used across Arabic-speaking and Muslim cultures as a feminine given name in that form. It gained wider English-language visibility through William Congreve's 1697 play The Mourning Bride, in which Zara is a captive queen, helping establish the name in literary and Western contexts. The name received renewed popular attention when Princess Anne of Britain named her daughter Zara in 1981. Related forms include Zahra, Zahrah, and Sara, the last of which shares phonetic similarity though derives from a distinct Hebrew root.