Tamara is a variant of the Hebrew feminine given name Tamar, a biblical name. The variant originated in the Russian language and spread into other languages through Russian. In Russia, where Tamara is associated with Queen Tamar of Georgia of Georgia, the name remains popular and frequently appears in Russian literature. It is also common in Central, Eastern, and Southeast European countries.
The name was formed through adding the Russian feminine suffix -a to Tamar (Hebrew: תָּמָר), which originated from the same generic noun for "date" (the fruit), "date palm" or just "palm tree". The derived Russian diminutive name is Toma, and its other shortened forms include Tama, Mara, Tata, and Tusya.
It first appeared in the English-speaking world in the 1930s and reached its peak in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it gained popularity among Black Americans. In the United States, the name was quite common from the late 1950s to mid-1990; more than 1,000 girls were named Tamara annually through 1996, with the highest numbers occurring in the 1970s. As of 2023, Tamara is relatively uncommon in the United States; in 2010, it dropped off the Top 1,000 Social Security Administration baby names list, with fewer than 250 instances recorded that year. Since the 1930s, Tamara has ranked among the top 320 most popular names in Australia, with peak popularity from the 1970s through the 1990s.
In the United Kingdom, it was the 137th most popular girl's name in 1997 but had dropped to 779th in 2021 when it was given to 47 babies. Cornish legends include a character named Tamara, associated with the River Tamar, whose name is of Celtic origin. According to Mabel Quiller-Couch's telling of the legend, Tamara was a sprite, the child of underground-living gnomes, who escaped to the earth's surface near Morwenstow and was turned into a river by her father when she refused to return underground, while the giants Tawridge and Tavy from Dartmoor, who fell in love with her, became the rivers Taw and Tavy. The Tamara Coast to Coast Way is an 87-mile (140 km) walking route following the river Tamar.
The name was also popular in Spain during the 1980s, possibly influenced by the daughter of Isabel Preysler and Carlos Falcó, Tamara Falcó.
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People named Tamara
Notable people with the given name Tamara include:
In the arts
Tamara Abdushukurova (1940–2025), Tajikistani actress
Tamara Acosta, Chilean actress
Tamara Al-Gabbani, Emirati fashion designer
Tamara Al Zool (born 2003), better known as Tära, Palestinian-Italian singer-songwriter
Tamara Arciuch (born 1975), Polish actress
Tamara Bleszynski (born 1974), Indonesian actress, singer, and model
Tamara Braun (born 1971), American soap opera actress
Tamara Brooks (1941–2012), American choral conductor
Tamara Buciuceanu (1929–2019), Romanian actress
Tamara Danz (1952–1996), German rock singer
Tamara Degtyaryova (1944–2018), Russian stage, television and film actress
Tamara Divíšková (born 1934), Czech ceramist and costume designer
Tamara Dobson (1947–2006), African-American actress and model
Tamara Dragičević (born 1989), Serbian actress and model
Tamara Drasin (c. 1905 – 1943), Ukrainian-born singer-actress
Tamara Feldman (born 1980), American actress
Tamara Gorski, Canadian actress
Politicians and activists
Tamara Adrián, Venezuelan politician
Tamara van Ark, Dutch politician
Tamara Bunke (1937–1967), Argentinian communist revolutionary
Tamara Dávila (born c. 1981), Nicaraguan sociologist, feminist and political activist
Tamara Duisenova (born 1965), Kazakh politician
Tamara Frolova, Russian politician
Tamara Grove, American politician
Tamara Jansen, Canadian politician
Tamara Kronis, Canadian politician
Tamara Manukova (born 1953), Belarusian politician
Tamara Mazzi, German politician
Tamara Smith, Australian politician
Tamara Stohlová (born 1989), Slovak politician
Tamara Sujú, Venezuelan activist
Tamara ten Hove, Dutch politician
Sportspeople
Tamara Bolt (born 2003), Brazilian footballer
Tamara Boroš (born 1977), Croatian table tennis player
Tamara Bykova (born 1958), Soviet–Russian track and field athlete
Tamara Čurović (born 1994), Serbian tennis player
Tamāra Dauniene (born 1951), Soviet–Latvian Olympic basketball player
Tamara Dorofejev (born 1984), Hungarian figure skater
Tamara Dronova (born 1993), Russian cyclist
Támara Echegoyen (born 1984), Spanish sailor
Tamara Giaquinto (born 2002), Canadian ice hockey player
Tamara Gómez Garrido (born 1991), Spanish professional triathlete
Tamara Horacek (born 1995), Croatian-born French Olympic handball player
Tamara Johnson-George (born 1971), American indoor volleyball player
Tamara Larrea (born 1973), Cuban beach volleyball player
Tamara McKinney (born 1962), American skier
Tamara Metal (1933–2022), Israeli Olympic high jumper and long jumper, and captain of the Israel women's national basketball team
Tamara Morávková (born 2003), Slovak footballer
Others
Tamara Beckwith (born 1970), English socialite
Tamara Ecclestone (born 1984), English-Serbian socialite, television personality and model
Tamara Falcó (born 1981), Spanish aristocrat, socialite and television personality
Tamara Finkelstein (born 1967), British civil servant
Tamara Griesser Pečar (born 1947), Slovenian historian
Tamara Oleksiyivna Grinchenko (born 1938), Ukrainian computer scientist
Kera Tamara (c. 1340 – c. 1389), known as Tamara Hejtan, Bulgarian princess
Tamara E. Jernigan (born 1959), American astrophysicist and NASA astronaut
Tamara Levitt (born 1971), Canadian author, mindfulness instructor, and voice-over artist
Tamara Mellon (born 1967), British fashion entrepreneur, president and founder of shoes company Jimmy Choo
Tammy Faye Messner (1942–2007), American televangelist and reality TV star
Tamara Mkheidze (1915–2007), Georgian arachnologist
Tamara Moss (born 1987), Indian model
Tamara Gräfin von Nayhauß (born 1972), German television presenter
Tamara Pamyatnykh (1919–2012), Soviet fighter pilot during the Second World War